


The Adventures of the Doctor and Rory the Roman

by jesterlady



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Historical, Big Bang Challenge, Canon Het Relationship, Episode Related, Episode: s05e12 The Pandorica Opens, Episode: s05e13 The Big Bang, F/M, Gen, If you only read one work by me, Male Friendship, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 38,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesterlady/pseuds/jesterlady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rory's waiting for 2,000 years.  How many Doctors do you think he'd meet in that time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Link to Media: [Scandalbaby](http://hiru-no-tsuki.livejournal.com/132087.html)  
> Disclaimer: I don't own DW. Some lines are from the show.  
> Written for the ScifiBigBang2012.

After dying, Rory woke up in first century AD with a head full of Roman memories, knowledge, and skills, and no way of getting back to his normal life and time. For a while, that was quite a problem for him and he was sincerely worried about it. However, after a time, he started to think he'd imagined his whole life and that Amy and the Doctor were just figments of his imagination. 

Then River Song – something about Cleopatra - had shown up in his camp and he'd gone to Stonehenge and found Amy battling for her life and everything was all right again. Apart from the fact that she didn't remember him and he was really made out of plastic and he killed her and then she had to get locked up in a box that even the Doctor couldn't get out of himself, all while the universe ended.

But Amy was more important than the entire universe to him as he told the Doctor quite forcefully, so he stayed with the Pandorica for the next two thousand years, which was maddening, exhausting - even for Autons - and lonely. Luckily, the Doctor popped in every hundred years or so and brought some of his own brand of trouble with him.


	2. Two

102 AD

Rory stood silent with raised sword, a quiet picture of faithful watchfulness.

“Oh, and one more thing,” came the Doctor's voice from behind him. Rory jumped about five meters in the air and dropped his sword. “Right, sorry, just wanted to let you know time is sort of...loopy right now. History's all muddled and things might not happen in the proper order. Some people might not exist, dates be wrong, etc. You could meet some people you wouldn't expect to. Even me.”

“You?” asked Rory in confusion.

“Right, any of me.”

The Doctor vanished before Rory could ask him what exactly he meant by 'any of him.' More than one Doctor? There was a nightmare for you.

Rory sat down and thought about it for about five minutes and then decided it probably wouldn't happen. How many times had the Doctor predicted something weird and then it had happened entirely different to the way he'd stated it would? Too many for Rory to count. Besides, couldn’t the Doctor have popped back and finished his sentence about what Rory was supposed to stay out of? That had seemed rather more important actually.

Then there was a familiar whirring, groaning, and scraping and Rory almost dropped his sword again. He put it away instead. There was no sense in accidentally chopping something off as he wouldn't be able to repair it. Perhaps a Roman centurion standing guard with one arm might look cool – according to the Doctor anyway - but if he was missing a foot or a leg it would not leave him in prime guarding condition. 

It would be ideal if plastic people could somehow get medical care. Perhaps they did back on Nestene world – funny, he now had two home planets - or whatever it was called. He found himself wishing he could find out about it, though it had probably never existed now, so even if they did take good care of their plastic, it wouldn’t do him any good. Perhaps with the Doctor back he could get some questions answered. Or perhaps the Doctor had fixed everything and he wouldn’t need to stand guard anymore. That would be optimal.

In the meantime, the Tardis had materialized. The door opened and Rory expected to see the familiar head of floppy hair, ridiculous bowtie, and some kind of new hat that was suddenly cool – he well remembered the bowler incident with something akin to dread. Instead he saw a short, little man with a Beatles haircut, wearing a very shabby jacket and pants even the Doctor couldn't possibly think were wearable.

“Who are you?” Rory asked immediately, all plastic senses on alert.

“Oh indeed,” the man said, stepping all the way out and observing his surroundings with a nervous air. “Indeed, you would ask that. Well, it's all very simple. Come along now,” he shouted into the interior of the Tardis, “it's quite safe. At least I assume it is,” he muttered to himself, before smiling at Rory. “How are you then?”

“What are you doing with the Doctor's Tardis?” Rory asked, hand going to his sword again. 

After all, he was a fully trained member of a Roman legion and failing Oratory classes had given him more time to practice his swordplay – at least, in that version of his life. Maybe accidentally chopping something off through sheer surprise would be better than getting some sort of alien ray to the face and he wasn't about to pull out his hand-gun again. Not for a few hundred years at least, or unless Amy was in real danger.

“But I am the Doctor. Of course I have my Tardis. What an absurd question, really. I don't think we've met though, how do you do?”

Rory stared for a second. _Any of me. Any of me._ Multiple Doctors with different faces. It was going to give him a two thousand year headache, he was certain of it.

“You're not my Doctor,” he said finally, when he realized he'd been staring for a few minutes.

“Certainly not. Have I regenerated again? Goodness me, I'm getting quite sloppy. It's not the dandy, is it?”

“A bit,” Rory said, still quite confused, but he'd let go of his sword.

“Oh dear, fancy capes and ruffles.” The so-called Doctor shuddered.

“No...no ruffles. At least not yet,” said Rory unsure why he was continuing this course of conversation.

“Well, that's all right then.” The Doctor brightened up and called over his shoulder again. “Come along, Jamie, don't be so slow.”

“It's not like we got where we were aiming at anyway, Doctor,” came a Scottish accent from inside the Tardis.

It gave Rory a little pang of memory, despite its being male and very very much more of a brogue than Amy's.

A dark-haired man a little younger than Rory and wearing a genuine kilt emerged from the Tardis.

“How can I believe you when you say you're the Doctor?” Rory asked.

“How can I believe you when you say you're whoever you are?” the Doctor asked and smiled as if that made everything all better.

“I'm Rory Williams and we traveled together in 2010 with Amy Pond. My Doctor is younger with floppy hair and a bowtie.”

“You promise no ruffles?” asked the Doctor.

“Yeah.”

Ruffles evidently gave this man nightmares.

“What's going on, Doctor?” Jamie asked, impatience in his voice.

“A bit of an identity crisis, apparently.” The Doctor patted Jamie's shoulder. “I'm sure Rory here will be much less cranky once we've explained everything to him. You see, young Rory,” he said, moving toward Rory and sitting down on a monumentalized, overturned alien that no longer existed, causing Rory to wince, “we Timelords have the ability to regenerate when we die. Our entire bodies change and we become somewhat of a new person, but we retain all our memories. I've regenerated once before and I've met my third self, but how many on yours is, I can't be sure. Nice to know I last a bit.”

“That's so something the Doctor would do,” Rory grumbled, sitting down next to the Pandorica.

Jamie remained standing with his arms folded across his chest.

“And just what are ya doing here?” he asked.

“Waiting,” Rory said, looking up.

“That sounds very trying,” the Doctor said kindly. “Did I leave you here?”

“He- you did – he - okay, I guess you did,” Rory said and decided that personal pronouns were about to become his worst nightmare. “I decided to stay though.”

“Always wanted the life of a Roman, eh?” the Doctor guessed. “Very brutal for my taste, but exciting.”

“I never wanted to be a Roman,” Rory said firmly. “It just sort of happened and I've got to guard the Pandorica.”

“Oh, yes, it's very magnificent,” the Doctor said, standing up and walking closer. “May I?”

“Do not try to open it,” Rory warned.

“Goodness me not. Who knows what's in there? That's a prison built for a monster if ever I saw one,” the Doctor said, fussing with his jacket sleeves.

Rory smiled ironically to himself.

“What's the smile for?” Jamie asked, standing protectively behind the Doctor.

“He's just being more and more like the Doctor,” Rory said. “I think I believe you now.”

“That's rich of ya,” Jamie said.

“You're quite welcome,” Rory said, just as sarcastically.

“Jamie, behave,” the Doctor said. “The 1700s are a bit far off, but that's no need to lose your manners.”

“You're from the 1700s?” Rory asked.

“Aye. The Doctor picked me up while I was fighting the Redcoats.”

“I'm going to kill him for getting us all into this,” Rory said and leaned back against the Pandorica.

Perhaps in a thousand years or so, he'd have gone crazy enough to imagine that such an action would be like leaning into Amy.

“You'd only get another one,” Jamie said wryly, “and probably a worse one.”

“Blast, you're right,” Rory said. 

He'd decided he liked Jamie.

“It's a hard life with the Doctor, you ken,” Jamie said, “but you'll get used to it.”

Maybe Jamie liked him now, too.

“Well, I've already died a couple of times so it can't get much worse, right?” Rory said and hoped he hadn’t just jinxed himself in some way.

“Died, dearie me, how so?” asked the Doctor.

“No use getting into it. Any special reason you're here, Doctor? Do I need to prepare for some type of alien invasion?” asked Rory, wearily.

“I should hope not,” the Doctor said. “Guard duty is quite enough for you. No, Jamie and I were trying, er...just wandering.”

“So he can't get it right either?” Rory asked Jamie.

“Not a single time that I've seen,” said Jamie with a long-suffering air.

“Yup, I'm thinking you're actually the Doctor,” Rory said.

“If you two are done being cheeky,” the Doctor said, a bit miffed-sounding, “then Jamie and I shall be off. Mindolosa Four is waiting.”

“Aye, and likely to for a while,” Jamie said gloomily.

“What impertinence!” said the Doctor.

“See ya later, mate,” Rory said. 

He and Jamie shook hands and then Rory shook the Doctor's hand.

The two of them went back into the Tardis and Rory watched it disappear with a slightly wistful look.

The Pandorica was cold and strong at his back and Rory settled in to wait.


	3. Five

112 AD

It had only taken Rory about three nights to figure out that he didn't need to sleep anymore, confirming the Doctor’s words to him, which he had halfway hoped wouldn’t be true. It was really weird, considering he had two different lifetime's worth of memories insisting that he did and had. But he never grew tired and he never got hungry and while that made guarding an easy job – no side trips to the loo, despite the cave's decided lack of such facilities – it also pretty much doubled the time that he was going to have to spend alert for the next couple of millennia. No eight hour respites for him. 

Still, he made contingency plans and he practiced his sword passes and he wished he had one of those fish vampires here now. Amy wouldn't need to save him the next time he met one of those. Though they were all dead now, at least, in the other lifetime, and in this one too, seemingly. But then, he could always shoot anything that threatened him now. After about eight years, he finally started practicing opening and closing his hand – he’d wept the first time, amazed he could still cry and still felt guilty every time - and on his aim. He never seemed to run out of ammo and he spent practically an entire year wondering how that was possible. 

He figured it was pretty much like what all those comic book heroes stranded on desert islands went through, learning their skills until they became practically superhuman. Only he already was. Still, if it was a movie, this would probably be a good montage point and he bucked himself up thinking about that for a couple of years and planning the whole movie out, pondering who they could get to play him and hoping it wouldn’t be a rubbish actor, though it probably would be. 

He explored the cave and made sure there were no more lurking Cybermen waiting around anywhere, but all he found was dust and statues of aliens who no longer existed because they'd feared the Doctor and formed an inter-universal alliance, which, considering all Rory had seen, was very, very odd.

He soon found all the exits and nooks and crannies underneath Stonehenge and he only wished his fifth form history teacher was around so he could finally earn that gold star. He would do an outer perimeter patrol – he liked to come up with official names for what he was doing, it made him feel less like he was a crazy plastic person living under a national phenomenon – every night, partially to make sure everything had stayed the same up top and partially to feel some kind of fresh air. It seemed very odd that he could still feel such things, air and touch, but his hair didn't grow and that was actually rather nice because it wasn't like he could do a thing like shaving properly with no mirror and a sword.

One night he was out roaming around the pillars and feeling rather like a weird creature of the night himself. There weren't really stars – he would find that odd except for the fact that all the other planets were dead – and he was going to ask his Doctor about the sun still burning the next time he saw him. There was a crashing sound behind him and he whirled around, switching his sword to his left hand and opening up his right hand-gun. Oh yes, he was getting quite ambidextrous now. The sky was raining down bits of rock and ash and it was a little bit freaky and he was quite glad the Pandorica was underground.

Something tackled him from behind and he dropped/threw his sword as he went down as he had no desire to get skewered. Who knew what that would do to his innards and he had no desire to see what they looked like now. 

“Are you quite all right, young man?” his assailant asked, offering him a hand, and Rory looked up into the eyes of a man slightly older than himself with blonde hair and wearing a cricket uniform-ish type thing. 

There was a stalk of celery pinned to his lapel. 

Rory was starting to wonder if it had all been a dream again, but they were still under the night sky out in the wilds of pre-practically anything Britain.

“No thanks to you,” he said and scrambled for his sword, instead finding a bunch of molten rock that would have fallen on his head and pulling his plastic hand back hurriedly. “Oh, yes, well, thanks to you then.”

“Absolutely. No need to thank me. Why, it's Rory! How are you, old boy?”

Rory looked a bit closer and saw the man had the same ageless, time-filled look in his eyes as his Doctor. A little younger, a little less dark, but full of what the universe had used to be.

“Doctor?” he asked.

“Yes, that's me. How long has it been?” asked this Doctor.

“About ten years,” said Rory.

“Oh, well, a great many more for me, I'm afraid. I'm in my fifth body now.”

“Smashing,” Rory said, rubbing his shoulder and wishing a bit ruefully that plastic people couldn't feel pain. “What are you doing here, Doctor?”

“Trying to prevent a volcano ship from exploding on Earth,” said the Doctor cheerfully.

“It's up there?” Rory asked, pointing upward.

“About five degrees north, but, yes, up there.”

“Then what are you doing down here?” asked Rory.

“Atmospheric pressure manipulation from the Tardis can blow the ship further away in order to catch some cosmic winds that will take it to a safe distance. The Earth's gravity, well, certain sections, are drawing the poor ship here like a magnet. Definitely not those poor creatures' faults. They had a bit of a collision with the moon, you see. It's a bit roasted, but that only makes it more mysterious, don't you think?”

Rory wondered if he'd followed all of that properly. 

“Okay, so is there anything I can do to help?” asked Rory.

“Actually, yes. I left Tegan up there in the ship, wrangling all those poor confused aliens around. She's quite good at that, isn't she?” Ignoring Rory's baffled look, the Doctor started walking briskly away from Stonehenge. Rory cast an agonized look back at the entrance to the underground, which he'd faithfully closed, and then followed the Doctor. “But I still need someone to help me in the Tardis.”

“We're not going to take off or anything, are we?” Rory asked.

“No need for that. We can do it all right here. No fear,” said the Doctor.

“Hard to do around you, Doctor,” Rory muttered and if the Doctor heard him he gave no sign.

A short walk away, during which the Doctor chattered on cheerfully, talking about all the things he'd done since he'd last seen Rory, they found the Tardis. It looked exactly the same and Rory was a little surprised to feel a bit homesick.

He was even more surprised when he got inside and everything was so different, so color-less, that it was like a slap in the face.

“Ah, I see I've got it a bit different for you,” the Doctor said, striding toward the console. “But she's the same old girl, aren't you?”

He slapped the console gently.

Rory closed the door behind him and, even though it was odd, still felt at home.

“Welcome home, Rory,” he muttered and wondered if he was ever going to say anything in a normal tone of voice again.

“We're on a bit of a time-crunch, I'm afraid,” the Doctor said and started energetically flipping levers and pushing buttons. 

It was all so Doctor-like that Rory smiled.

“Right, what do you need me to do?” he asked.

“Hold down here and push every other second there and watch this level here. I'll do all the rest, never fear,” answered the Doctor, dancing around the console.

“All the rest, is it?” Rory asked wryly, but did as he was told.

They worked that way for about ten minutes, Rory not really understanding anything that was going on, and the Doctor talking the whole time. Rory felt a bit dizzy.

“Right, we've got it!” the Doctor cried. “Oh, Rory, watcher and waiter and all around amazing Roman, you did it! Say, you look a bit the same. No kind of anti-aging field or anything?”

“I'm plastic,” said Rory.

“Plastic? Auton?” 

The Doctor drew back, not looking quite as friendly, and Rory sighed even as he catalogued away this new name for his apparent species.

“Look, I'm an imprint of a real human and I've got all his memories and I am Rory Williams and I'll blast anyone who says different. I'm keeping my fiancée safe because of your foul-up, so don't tell me I'm not important.”

“Calm down,” the Doctor said, putting his hands up. “You could blow something and then what will you do, eh? Now, I can see you've been through quite a lot and if I didn't have to go back and fetch Tegan before she kills someone – Turlough never can keep her in line, well, not even I can seemingly - I'd ask for a bit more of an explanation. Perhaps next time?”

“Sorry, right, I'm sorry I blew up there. I just have a bit of an identity crisis going on. Am I human, am I Roman, am I plastic? I am all three,” Rory ended lamely.

The Doctor's face softened even more.

“I'm sure whoever you are, you are absolutely essential. Thank you, Rory, for your help. Not only did you help save Earth today, but you've saved your fiancée.”

Rory had to smile at that.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Right, now it will only be a short walk for you back. I'd give you a lift-” began the Doctor.

“That's okay,” Rory said hastily, not wanting to get swept off to the other end of the galaxy or anything like that.

The Doctor smiled, somewhat knowingly, and shook his hand.

“Pleasant waiting, Rory.”

“Until next time, Doctor.”

Rory left the Tardis and watched as it dematerialized into the night and then turned and headed back toward...home.

He was still slightly confused as to how this kept happening with the Doctor. He wondered if maybe they were messing up the space-time continuum or something. Even more as it was already pretty much a mess. Rory didn't even really know anything about those kinds of things. Still, if this was going to keep happening, he was probably going to need to come up with some kind of list of rules or something. He wished he could just ask his Doctor if meeting his older – or, actually, younger - selves was going to really screw up when they were supposed to meet in the future. He wished that maybe the Doctor would have warned him about what to do in such an eventuality instead of just mentioning the possibility of such an eventuality. Maybe when he had warned Rory he'd just meant time was already so mixed up that it wouldn't matter who Rory met. But he still could have left him a handbook or something. That would have been great.

He sealed the entrance behind him and patted the Pandorica gently.

“Hi, honey, I'm home.”


	4. Nine

502 AD

Rory missed the old days. Not just the really old days when he’d been human and had a not-block Amy, but the old days when it had just been him and the Pandorica underground and he could talk to Amy and pretty much spent his time trying not to go crazy with boredom.

These days he had to try to make sure that all the vying forces of the world didn’t harm Amy or her prison. It was now about four hundred years since he’d been left behind to guard but he hadn’t been left to do it alone for long. About 118 the Romans had come back. Some person he can’t quite remember the name of had been named Emperor and decided to celebrate at Stonehenge. Or something like that. Despite the rather serious discipline – Rory had horror memories on that score – Romans were rather good at celebrating for no reason at all. His memories on that were equally as horrendous in some ways. Whatever the reason, some rather riotous Roman celebrating had led to a bunch of drunken men somehow getting into the cavern and only Rory’s super plastic powers had kept them from killing him on the spot. Or de-plastifying him or whatever the term for making plastic not be walking and talking was.

Eventually he’d managed to convince them of the box’s magical powers and his necessity for guarding it. For the glory of Rome, don’t you know. Though they’d insisted on moving the thing to Rome and that had been a long, fun trek over oceans and continents. Now, though the Pandorica – and they had all been so impressed with the name – was considered sacred and him only less so, there were so many warring factions around him that he’d had to become quite the politician. It wouldn’t exactly have been easy to hoist the thing on his back and make a break for it. So…he changed again and became more than he’d ever imagined Rory Williams, the staff nurse from Leadworth, could be.

But, as always, he was concerned for the box. The western Roman empire was no more and Rome had been sacked more times than history was probably going to record - at least the previous version of history. This one was already wonky from what he could tell and he’d definitely not gotten an A-level there - and he didn’t want the Pandorica there anymore. But while he could probably drag it out himself if he wanted to take a very long time about it – sometimes he wished Amy was truly there to see how much stronger he was now, though if she was there would be no need to drag it anywhere – he didn’t really want to take that long. Now would be a good time for technology to kick in.

He was currently fighting off multiples of the attacking hordes who had decided the Pandorica would make a grand prize. Those he could reason with he did and that’s how he’d stopped hundreds from trying to get into the box before. He was a legend now and he found it actually a little bit bothersome. Legends were always getting pestered and challenged and he had to constantly be very mysterious and oracle-like.

Not the sort of things one should be thinking about when one was fighting for their plastic life. Naturally that’s when the Doctor showed up.

One minute Rory was skewering a Vandal and the next he was being grabbed roughly by the shoulders and pulled behind the Tardis.

“Can’t even guard a box properly, what are we going to do with you, Rory Williams?”

“Uh, help?” Rory suggested, peeking around the box, not even looking at this version of the Doctor, assuming it was some version of the man.

“Cover your ears,” said the Doctor.

“What?”

“Don’t argue with me; just cover your plastic ears. Unless you want to get disconnected from the signal.”

“About that, if whatever is controlling me doesn’t exist, how do I exist?” asked Rory, his life leading him to the conclusion that he should ask questions whenever they came up, regardless of the circumstances.

“What?”

“We should probably talk about it later,” Rory said and covered his ears as tightly as possible.

The Doctor stood up and pulled out a smaller, blue-er version of the sonic screwdriver and something exploded. The hordes started to run.

The Doctor turned to Rory and grinned largely. Rory was rather taken aback by this Doctor. Black leather jacket, combat boots, shaved head, and the biggest ears he’d ever seen.

“Your ears,” he said, staring rudely and not seeming to be able to stop himself.

“What’s wrong with my ears?” the Doctor asked in a hurt tone of voice. “It’s all very well to talk, Mr. Plastic. Didn’t you even think about getting a nose reduction with the body makeover?”

“I have a million things I want to say to you right now, Doctor,” Rory said, getting up, “but I’ve got to get this box somewhere safe. Is there anything inside the Tardis that could help?”

“Where do you want it?” asked the Doctor.

“Underground, a burial tomb, anything that doesn’t involve people trying to get inside it,” answered Rory.

“We’ll have the Tardis tow it,” the Doctor said. “I know a great place outside of Abyssinia. Won’t get unearthed for another thousand years or so, barring unusual circumstances.” Rory didn’t like the way he said unusual circumstances. “How long are you waiting anyway?”

“1990s…” Rory trailed off because he really wasn’t certain.

Amy would be born in the eighties, but what was he supposed to do…kidnap a baby and chuck her at the Pandorica hoping that would be able to satisfy the genetic material criteria?

“Hope you last that long,” the Doctor said and darted into the Tardis. Rory stood and waited and the Doctor poked his head back out. “Well, come on. I haven’t got all fifteen hundred years even if you do.”

Rory hesitated, sheathing his sword and looking back at the Pandorica. He put his hand on it briefly and whispered a brief promise to keep her safe and then entered the Tardis, which was different again. Very coral. But it was much closer to the Tardis he was used to and this time he felt an even more overwhelming feeling of being home.

“I cannot get swept out into space, Doctor. Pilot very carefully,” Rory said sternly.

“Stupid plastic ape,” the Doctor muttered, flipping switches and levers. “It’s all your fault I’m here at all, you know. I got a signal and I thought to myself, ‘what a great idea! I’ll just go take care of the plastic.’ Looked like it was going to be in 2005 and then the signal jumped time tracks like crazy and I ended up here. It was you all along, polluting the timelines.”

Rory paused for a moment and then grasped a hold of a coral strut as they rocketed forward. He pushed to see the scanner and was amazed to see the city of Rome burning as they sped away from it, towing the Pandorica. He hadn’t known the city was that bad off and felt grateful the Doctor had come along when he had. Sparks flew out from the console.

“Rome’s burning,” Rory said unnecessarily.

“Rome’s always burning,” the Doctor said quietly and Rory looked at him.

“What body are you?” he asked.

“The ninth.”

“And you must know the same things my Doctor knows,” Rory guessed.

“Is that so?” asked the Doctor indifferently.

“Yeah, the Time War. You were in it.”

The Doctor looked at him briefly and then glanced away.

“I go around broadcasting that now?”

“More like we had to try and get you drunk which apparently is very difficult because of some amazing Timelord bit of physiology that I’m pretty sure you made up and it was Amy who really wheedled it out of you, but you could put it like that.”

“Then this discussion is moot, yeah?” the Doctor said firmly, looking rather upset.

Rory fell silent and tried to remember anything else that had happened during that one night and that revealing conversation.

“You should go back to 2005,” he said finally. “I think something good is going to happen to you there.”

“Rory the Oracle,” the Doctor said and smiled again.

They started to really shake and Rory wondered if they were going to crash. Then there was a huge jolt and silence.

“Full stop,” the Doctor said and when Rory opened the doors, they were underground and since he was pretty sure they hadn’t dematerialized, he was confused as to how they’d gotten there.

But the Pandorica had arrived as well, even sitting prettily on a dais of some sort and they were in a tomb.

“This isn’t going to give me nightmares for centuries or anything,” he muttered.

“Autons don’t sleep,” the Doctor said.

“Oh, thanks for letting me know. I just thought the last four hundred years were a bad case of insomnia,” Rory said, not even trying to be sarcastic it was so easy.

“You’re all right, Rory,” the Doctor said and clapped him on the shoulder. Then he froze and looked at the Pandorica. “Why is it green?”

Rory looked and saw that the sigils on the box were starting to glow green, just like when he’d opened it for the Doctor.

“No, no!” he cried and then wheeled on the Doctor. “It must have been when you used the sonic. You have to close it again.”

“I can’t,” the Doctor said, though he was doing all sorts of things with the sonic that were making Rory dizzy. “The Tardis tow combined with the sonic signal must have set it on automatic.”

Rory watched in horror.

“She can’t wake up now, she’ll die, Doctor.”

“It won’t happen for another couple of minutes. I want you to tell me exactly what is going on. What’s wrong with the universe, why did I leave you here, and what’s in that box?” asked the Doctor.

Rory took a deep – unnecessary - breath and kept his eyes trained on the Pandorica while he explained everything that had happened to the Doctor.

“And you decided to wait for two thousand years?”

Rory turned to the Doctor.

“Of course I did.”

The Doctor started to grin and then he danced around a little bit and then he hugged Rory and then he started to fiddle with the screwdriver.

“You’re marvelous, Rory Williams. I could definitely do with more like you. Can’t wait to meet you.”

“I wasn’t as marvelous then,” Rory interjected.

“No matter,” the Doctor said.

“And, technically, you’ve already met me. Multiple times.”

“No bother,” the Doctor said, brushing the matter aside.

“Uh, Amy,” Rory reminded him.

“Right.” The Doctor stopped messing around and they faced the Pandorica. “It’s almost open.”

“Can you close it again?” asked Rory.

“Yeah, I can. Just…quickly.”

The box split open and Amy appeared in a pool of light, still strapped in. Her eyes opened – but just barely - and she gave a weak grin at Rory.

“Oi, stupid.”

“You’re really marrying her?” the Doctor asked.

“Who’s that and where’s little me?” Amy demanded, her voice hoarse.

Rory was too busy rushing forward and kissing her and it had been almost half a millennium since his last snog and he figured he was good for that.

“I missed you, too,” she said between kisses, “but, seriously, where’s Amelia?”

“It’s the wrong time, Amy,” he said, finally pulling back. “We have to put you back or you’re going to die.”

“Then we’ll be even,” she said, but she reached one hand up as far as she could – not only was she locked into the Pandorica, but she looked incredibly weak - and touched his face softly.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, closing his eyes and then turning to the doctor. “Doctor, can we close it and she’ll be okay? Your – his - your plan will still work?”

The Doctor scanned Amy with the screwdriver and then shook his head.

“The Doctor?” Amy asked, looking puzzled. “Not my Doctor.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes.

“Stupid humans,” he grumbled. “Always with the explaining. Listen up, Amy Pond, your boyfriend here is saving your life, so shut it and listen to him.”

“Why won’t it work?” Rory asked.

“One minute till she dies. And this encounter has wiped my message from her head. She won’t remember what to do in the future.”

“Can you erase this time and put it back in?” asked Rory.

“Yes,” said the Doctor.

“Then do it.”

“Stop messing with my head,” Amy said, her face going white.

“Amy, you’ve got to. It’s the only way to save you,” pleaded Rory.

Amy looked at him for a second.

“Forty five seconds,” the Doctor said.

“Do it,” she said.

The Doctor leaned forward and put his hands on Amy’s temples.

“I love you,” Rory said.

“Love you too, idiot,” Amy said and then her eyes fluttered closed.

The Doctor stepped back and Rory watched the box close, shutting Amy in again.

“I guess I got more than I’d hoped for when I agreed to wait that long,” Rory said. “That’s the first time she’s ever told me she loved me, you know.”

“Better hope for a better next first time,” the Doctor said. “That was rubbish.”

“Stamp on a boy’s dreams, why don’t you, Doctor?” Rory said, feeling a bit giddy now that Amy was safe again and she’d at least given him a clue about what his Doctor had been planning for restoring her.

“Cheerfully,” the Doctor answered and then they looked awkwardly at each other for a moment.

“So, you’re probably headed out,” Rory said.

“Yeah, gotta keep living those pointless years until I fix everything,” replied the Doctor.

“How many more of you can there be?” asked Rory curiously.

“Four more after me,” the Doctor said softly. “Yours can’t be that far off.”

“You’re a very confusing alien, Doctor.”

“Yup,” the Doctor said, grinning. “Listen, Rory, time’s all in a mess, but it’s going to right itself out if this works. But you might need to do a little manual fixing. Keep that in mind for the next couple of centuries, huh?”

“What?” Rory asked and then didn’t bother repeating the question.

It was somehow all very pointless arguing with the Doctor and with time and with whatever was going to happen. He had his job to do and that was the point. That was the point of being plastic, of waiting, of being Rory the Centurion.

“Goodbye,” said the Doctor..

“Goodbye, Doctor.”

The Doctor stepped back into the Tardis and then stepped back out with a cardboard box and handed it to Rory.

“You had that ready,” Rory said, looking into it.

“Yup. Alleviate the boredom a bit,” said the Doctor, winking at him.

“You are my favorite alien,” Rory said.

The Doctor simply waved and vanished back into the Tardis and it left again.

Rory smiled and thumbed through his box. Some of his favorite books. Practically all of them hadn’t been written yet.

There were language books and history books and instruction manuals.

Yes, this would be very useful.

He found a safe corner and explored his surroundings. Safety of the Pandorica above all else.

Then he opened a book and started reading it out loud. Amy might as well enjoy this, too.


	5. Eight

627 AD

Rory had pretty much gotten used to their new home. He liked the way the Pandorica sat up on the dais, making Amy the queen she really was. It was very quiet, a lot more quiet than Stonehenge had been, and he figured it probably had something to do with respect for the dead and the fact that there weren’t people tromping all over above ground either performing weird rituals or trying to figure out how the place had actually gotten there. In the last hundred and twenty five years he’d only had contact with one funeral party that had descended far enough into the earth to bury one of their own.

It was at that point when he’d discovered the exit. He hadn’t been able to before that and so he was at a complete loss as to what was going on in the world outside. Empires would rise and fall, he gathered, before he would poke his head above ground again. At least he hoped so. But now he did have access to the over world if he wanted it. There was a certain trick to opening up the tombs that he’d watched a slave perform once.

He didn’t really need to use it. After all, he didn’t require food. He had pinched a few of the newer burial robes to create a little nest for him to sit and read in. He’d long since memorized all of the Doctor’s books. He was fluent – book fluent, his accent was probably lousy - in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Latin – his Latin accent was absolutely perfect he knew – Greek, and he was grasping Mandarin, he really was. He had entire conversations – one sided - with Amy in foreign languages to keep up the practice. The Doctor had also included a lot of medical and history books so Rory kept up with his medical training, too and figured he could probably pass any of his exams now if need be and trump all of his professors while doing so.

When he wasn’t reading, he was practicing with his sword and his hand-gun, keeping up a pretty pointless exercise regime, but he needed to move or he’d go crazy. He wasn’t sure if plastic people had muscle memory or maybe it was plastic memory. Either way, he felt like he could literally do or go anywhere or be anything, but he never ventured far beyond the cavern Amy was housed in. She couldn’t leave and so he wouldn’t.

He’d noticed the rumbling and didn’t really think anything of it. This far beneath the Earth there were strange sounds all over the place, despite the natural quiet. But it kept happening for about three days and he started to worry. His hearing and eyesight had improved so much that it was slightly ridiculous, and he could tell that it wasn’t usual under-the-Earth sounds. He’d long ago planned how he would escape with the Pandorica if need be and most of the prep work was done, but it would still take a while. The pulleys and levers of this day and age only went so far and he had no way of inventing the elevator a thousand years or so too soon.

Flakes of dirt started to fall on the wall across from the Pandorica and he had to switch his escape plan all around. He was busy working on that when the Tardis came barreling through the wall and nearly hit Amy in her box. It came to rest, slightly leaning on the cavern wall, and the door popped open.

“I’m sorry; I’m late, aren’t I?”

“Late?” asked Rory.

A man dressed in a velvet jacket with longish, curly hair sprang out of the box, dusting himself off. He was covered in dirt.

“Yes, I knew it was today, but I got caught up at the World’s Fair and it was amazing and I should’ve brought you a treat, I’m very sorry.”

“Doctor,” Rory stated, but it was a bit of a question, too.

“That’s me. Eighth one,” said the Doctor cheerfully.

“If you’re the eighth, how come there’s a ninth?”

“Well, there can be thirteen, Rory. We went over regeneration, remember?” said the Doctor.

“But Nine was…never mind, listen, thanks for all the books, but something’s going on and so I’ve got to get Amy out of here.”

“Books? Oh, well, yes, I know, that’s why I’m here,” said the Doctor.

“Oh. What’s happening?” asked Rory.

“Moles.”

“Moles…?”

“Yes, Moles. They’re digging and I’m afraid this is right in their flight path,” explained the Doctor.

“Flight?”

“To them it’s flying, Rory. Now, this is going to be tricky, are you ready?”

“What’s going to be tricky?” Rory asked wearily.

“Re-routing them. They’re fleeing, you know. There’s been a terrible flood. I am explaining this all in the wrong order, aren’t I?”

“Um, yes,” replied Rory.

The Doctor took out some weird device and leaned against the wall, pressed against it, listening. He stood that way for about five minutes and Rory finally just went back to preparing the Pandorica to move.

“We’ve about eight and a half minutes,” the Doctor finally said, striding over to the ropes. “Oh, excellent, you’re getting her secure.”

“Yes, we’ve got to move her,” said Rory.

“No, no, she’s what’s going to deter them. It will cause a bit of a quake though, so we’ll need to secure her to make sure she doesn’t fall,” said the Doctor.

“I’m not putting her in harm’s way, Doctor,” Rory said firmly. “I’ve already done that.”

“You keep saying she,” the Doctor said, then stopped, “I suppose I do, too.”

“But we already talked about this,” Rory said, getting frustrated. “Oh, never mind. Listen, what’s the plan and how does it involve her being safe?”

“I’m going to use the Tardis to reroute the air patterns in here, letting the Moles get a whiff of the Pandorica. They’re somewhat primitive, but they have the best instincts in three galaxies and that smell will make them go miles around. We’ll have to cut it pretty close though.”

“What can I do?” asked Rory.

“Do you happen to have any concept of structural engineering?” asked the Doctor.

“Actually…” Rory said, thinking back to a certain book he’d found boring, but at least it wasn’t _Wind in the Willows_ for the sixtieth time “…yes. That was one of the books.”

“You do like to talk about books,” the Doctor said. “Now, I’m going to man the Tardis and I want you to strap yourself to the box, on the left side, closest to the wall. I’m going to give you a device to measure the distance and when you see that the Moles are reaching the weakest point of the southwest corner of this room, you yell and let me know.”

“Okay…”

The Doctor reached into his jackets and handed Rory something that definitely shouldn’t be used in this century – this millennia, for that matter - and disappeared back into the Tardis. Rory grabbed rope – that he had, uh, needed to snitch from above ground - and started to strap himself tightly to the harness he’d wound around the Pandorica – hadn’t that been fun, but he was glad it was done now. He tried to figure out how the thing the Doctor had given him worked and eventually worked out that it was upside down.

“Ready, Rory?” the Doctor yelled.

“Ready, Doctor.”

“Might be a bit of a bumpy ride and we might not get a chance to say goodbye. The Tardis is in the trajectory path of the Earth currents.”

Rory decided the Doctor was making that up.

“Right,” he said – there was no point in arguing – “so, thanks then.”

“I’m glad we’ll meet again,” the Doctor said and then vanished again.

“And again and again and again before I go mad as a hatter,” Rory said, under his breath.

He may or may not have been reading _Alice in Wonderland_ before the rumbling episode had started.

Rory quickly used his plastic-y eyes – which, really, saw very well – to guess at what point he would need to yell for the Doctor. There were a few tense moments and all the while the rumbling grew louder and the cavern started to shake. Earth kept falling and now rocks were coming loose as well. Idly Rory wondered if, somehow, some way, Amy could feel this.

His eyes were trained to the machine and it was very close now. Then it was the moment.

“Now, Doctor!” he yelled at the top of his voice over the noise.

There was a high pitched groan from the Tardis and then air started to swirl all around them. Rory had to hold tight to the side of the Pandorica to keep from rising into the miniature tornado the Doctor had just raised.

There were new sounds, like stampeding buffalos and earthquakes and scared rodents, but they started to fade after a moment or two. Rory could hardly see because earth and rocks and all of his nice books were flying around and getting ripped apart. Well, he did have them memorized and the pages and things he’d really wanted to remember were in a satchel-type thing – which he’d gotten in Rome and had not stolen in any way - he wore around his belt. His feet started to lift off the ground and then the whirring stopped and the Tardis began to fly past him, following the sounds of the Moles retreating.

“Toss,” the Doctor said, from the open door of the Tardis. 

Rory threw the device and it landed in the Doctor’s hands.

“Farewell,” the Doctor cried and the door slammed shut and the Tardis vanished into the dark.

Then the roof caved in. 

Rory covered himself as best he could and the tall sides of the Pandorica were his shelter, just like they’d taught him back in school, however many lifetimes ago. It seemed like a few more before the shaking stopped and the dust settled and he could look upward and see the night sky again.

“Time to move again,” he mumbled – to Amy and to himself – “the neighborhood really has gone downhill.

Of course he was somewhat glad that no one was really around to hear him say that.


	6. Two Round Two

754 AD

Rory had never really imagined what it would be like to be alive at different points in history when he was a boy. That had been more of an Amy thing to do – when they weren’t playing Raggedy Doctor, that is – but he now found himself being forced into a very literal play acting of that exact thing. 

The Pandorica had lately been in China where his hand-gun had very nearly started a revolution and might have led to the invention of gunpowder, he wasn’t sure. As it was, he’d met the first female ruler in China and she’d helped him sneak the Pandorica out of the country when it became obvious that nobody would leave it alone. 

Now they were smack dab in the middle of Charlemagne’s empire, not that he was emperor just yet. It was actually very exciting, but even though everyone he met was astonished at his youth and old-fashioned armor and his grasp of linguistics and knowledge of science and history, he didn’t really get to know anyone, which, for the most part, was fine. His mission was not to make friends and influence people, but to keep the Pandorica safe. Still, being a legend was rather lonely, even if the Pope did call on you to advise him at need.

The Pope was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. Religious factions who were divided as to the purpose of the Pandorica were pressuring him to make a decision about what to do with it.

Rory did his best to be the mysterious figure he was play-acting at and since he was historically listed everywhere the Pandorica had been, it helped. But the now wide-spread Christianity had made people less apt to believe in mysterious signs and portents. Or more so. It was a toss-up really. Rory couldn’t help but think how fascinated the little clergyman from Leadworth would be to live at this time period. But, in the meantime, some people were trying to throw Amy in a furnace and he was having none of it.

The Doctor had showed up then.

It was the little Doctor, the one with Jamie. Only now he had a girl called Zoe with him, too. She wore the most amazing jumpsuits and Rory had to focus really hard on not focusing on them. He idly wondered how Jamie handled it.

Once the Doctor had shown up, he’d taken over the hearings and the Pope and he had some really fantastic arguments. It was actually quite colossal. This version of the Doctor seemed very erratic and nervous, but Rory noticed that when something important was at stake, he was just as fiery and powerful as any of the other Doctors he’d met.

Rory didn’t say much after that. He simply stood to one side and let the Doctor handle everything. He was – as the Doctor had put it – a symbol, and it wouldn’t do to have the symbol of the Pandorica fall on his knees and start begging the Pope for mercy, as Rory felt he might have done if it had gone on much longer.

“Right, right,” the Doctor shouted after a particularly difficult session, “I didn’t want to do this, but you’re leaving me no choice. There’s always a choice, isn’t there?” he said softly to himself, so only Rory, Jamie, and Zoe could hear. “This box is special and absolutely cannot be opened or damaged or you will have destroyed yourselves.”

“You’d think he had a clue about what was in there,” Jamie whispered to Rory and Zoe and grinned.

“But he does,” Rory said and then remembered and heaved a sigh. 

Now he knew how the Doctor felt. This meeting out of sequence thing was going to be the death of him. Jamie and Zoe just gave him weird looks and he ignored them. There wasn’t any point. No point at all.

The Doctor was still pontificating though and strode into his Tardis – which Rory had heard rumors was also to be put on the destroy-or-not table, and he could just imagine how well that would go – and Rory followed him, forcing himself to walk solemnly and not run like a chicken with its head cut off.

“Doctor, what are you going to do?” he asked.

“Why, give them a show, of course,” the Doctor said and grinned at him. “You might want to watch yourself.”

“Do not open that box!” Rory warned and ran back outside, leaving the Doctor muttering behind him.

The crowds were growing restless and soon the Tardis started to shake and the Pandorica started to glow, not green, but red, and some of the people dropped to their knees and others started roaring about heresy and some fled for their lives. The Pope himself was watching with his mouth open.

“Hee, how was that?” the Doctor said, striding back out and glancing with satisfaction at the mixed-up crowd. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

“I wish you’d do it again, Doctor,” Zoe said, linking her arm through his.

“Aye,” Jamie said.

“This isn’t a game,” Rory said sharply and then regretted it. 

They couldn’t know how much was at stake here.

“It’s never a game,” the Doctor said. “You’re just a little bit wound up all the time, aren’t you? Shouldn’t wonder.”

Rory couldn’t really argue with him. He hadn’t been at ease for six hundred years. That was enough to make anyone on edge.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just, please, remember how important she is.”

“We could if you would explain,” Zoe said gently and Rory smiled down at her.

“Later,” he promised.

In the meantime, everyone had more or less quieted down and the Pope stood to address them all.

“We declare this box to be a treasure of the empire and the Church. It shall be proclaimed sacred and treated with the utmost care. We shall heed the warning of the Lone Centurion.”

“Fancy title,” Jamie said, elbowing Rory.

“Just what I needed,” Rory said.

So then he oversaw the placing of the Pandorica in one of the more heavily guarded vaults. The Pope had insisted on putting the Tardis in there, too and the Doctor and Rory hadn’t argued. What did it matter when the Tardis could just leave? What the Pope couldn’t dissuade Rory from was being locked in the room with both boxes, not knowing that the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe had vanished into the Tardis already.

Rory gave them strict instructions not to open the vault under any circumstance and the heavy doors were closed and even Rory wouldn’t be able to get them back open. Rory ran to the Pandorica and leaned his head against it.

“I thought I’d lost you today,” he whispered. 

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked to see the Doctor.

“Shall you explain now?” asked the Doctor.

“I already explained to your ninth body,” Rory said. “Won’t my telling you now mess that up?”

“Hmmm, yes, that is a conundrum.” The Doctor thought for a second. “Would you say that the reason you’re here is related to a wrong-ness in the timelines?”

“Definitely,” Rory said.

“And if this box doesn’t somehow make it to a certain time then all is lost?”

“Yes,” said Rory.

It was true; after all, all would be lost for him if Amy died.

“And you originally met me in my…”

“Later than ninth is all I know.”

“Then I daresay everything is rather messed up anyway. It would probably help to have more information should you meet my third or fourth selves, for example. Especially third, humph,” said the Doctor grumpily.

Rory laughed a little.

“Couldn’t you, say, erase your own memory of seeing me?”

“Yes, that could work,” the Doctor said, putting his fingers to his lips. “Except we’ve already met several times for you already. Unless…” he stopped for a moment “…unless I gave myself a trigger. A trigger of you. I wouldn’t remember this unless I saw you again, in which case it wouldn’t matter if you already knew me.”

“But I met your ninth before your eighth and he gave me things based on things that I had told Eight,” said Rory.

“A little illogicality is to be assumed,” the Doctor said. “I’ve noticed some very strange things on Earth recently, things not happening as they were supposed to.”

“Let me tell you why,” Rory said, deciding he’d rather have the Doctor make this decision with full knowledge of what he was really deciding.

And so he told them everything.

“My, my,” the Doctor said, “oh, just imagine all you’ve done. I’m quite proud of you.” 

The Doctor hugged him and it was a little bit uncomfortable in his armor, but Rory didn’t really mind. It was amazing how lack of human – alien, whatever – touch made you go a little bit crazy. Killing people with swords didn’t really count and Rory really didn’t want to think about that.

“Thank you,” he said. “So you understand how important it is that I protect her? And that we don’t mess with time any further than we can help?”

“I still believe that erasing my memory when I’m not with you will work,” the Doctor said. “The trigger of seeing you should mitigate whatever temporal disturbances we’ve already caused by meeting ahead of time. Mostly.”

“I need you to be sure,” Rory said. Amy’s life was on the line. “I have to be sure.”

“Do you trust me?” the Doctor asked.

“With her life,” Rory said after a minute or two.

“Then, whenever you see me, simply say ‘Rory,’ and I’ll remember.”

Rory nodded. He still wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but at least he could count on the Doctor.

“You’d better get going,” he said. “I’d hate for you to miss whatever else you’re going to do.”

“You might have to make sure I forget you again though,” the Doctor said. “I’m a little bit obstinate in remembering things I’m not supposed to.”

“Forget me, Doctor,” Rory said and the Doctor hugged him again. 

Then Jamie shook his hand and Zoe hugged him and they all trooped into the Tardis, taking with them the ship’s light, leaving Rory alone with the box in the dark,

“You’re an empirical treasure now,” he told Amy, exploring the vault with his enhanced vision. “What do you think about that?”


	7. Four

879 AD

There were times Rory really appreciated being plastic. It made long marches a lot easier. Right now, though, he wished he was traveling without his hands tied behind his back. His sword had been taken away and it was a little hard to shoot people when you couldn’t see where you were shooting. Not that he could have shot an entire Muslim army. He was a little bit worried that violence was becoming his answer for everything anyway. Somehow it was just very, very wrong and something the Doctor wouldn’t approve of. Any of him. It made Rory ill every time he thought about the lives he’d taken, before and after the ever sickening kill of Amy. All he could hope for was that the Doctor would fix time and that this history would never have happened. 

He wished people would stop sacking the cities that the Pandorica was housed in. It made it necessary for him to put on his mysterious oracle hat and he was never very comfortable wearing it. It had been working for over seven hundred years though. There was that. But the Muslims didn’t seem to agree and now he was being frog-marched into Spain where the Pandorica was being taken as spoils of war. All in a day’s work for a plastic centurion.

His guards thought it was very odd that he never slept or ate and he would have tried to do so to oblige them – or so they would stop freaking him out with their constant watching of him – but those switches appeared to have been turned off or something. He still wondered how he was able to keep going when it was very likely the Nestene whats-its had been wiped from existence. He kept forgetting to ask the Doctor about it.

“Halt!”

Rory stopped, glad for a little rest. He didn’t sleep, but he still got sore feet, though much, much later than a human would have. 

They made up camp for the night and Rory was, as usual, tied to the wagon housing the Pandorica. He settled down for a long night of boredom and making up escape plans and trying to appear as imposing and yet not threatening as he could. It really was a very interesting life he was leading.

“Psst,” came a noise from behind him. 

Rory tried to twist around but it was a little bit hard being all tied up and everything.

“Yes?” he said calmly.

“Did you know your uniform is extremely out of date?” asked a male voice from behind him.

“It hadn’t occurred to me, but thanks for the fashion advice,” he said, hoping he was talking to who he thought he was talking to.

There was a rustling from behind him and then something tapped him on the shoulder. He turned as much as he was able and saw a tall man leaning against the Pandorica on the wagon above him. He had extraordinarily curly hair springing out from underneath a hat and the longest scarf Rory had ever seen. It was a wonder he hadn’t strangled himself or tripped and broken his neck. The man smiled, flashing extremely white teeth everywhere in the moon and torch light.

“Could you possibly let me know where I am? It’s a bit dark out and I’ve lost my way,” said the man.

“The borders of Spain,” Rory said and paused. “Would I be right in thinking you’re the Doctor?”

“A pleasure to meet you,” the Doctor said, jumping down and then yanking his scarf out from the wagon spokes it had gotten itself into. “Though we haven’t. Met that is. You really are very old-fashioned,” he said, examining Rory up and down.

“Doctor, it’s Rory.” Rory said it very carefully, annunciating beautifully.

The Doctor blinked for a moment and then another grin split his face.

“It worked again. I say, I am rather clever.”

Again?

“The cleverest alien there ever was,” Rory said, rolling his eyes. “Now, could you untie me?”

The Doctor pulled out an even different version of the sonic and flicked it at Rory’s ropes. They snapped and he glanced around, looking for his over-protective guards. They usually took it upon themselves to watch him in shifts. He couldn’t see them anywhere.

“The guards are all taking a nap,” the Doctor said, “very tired they were.”

Rory smiled.

“Excellent, now, do you have anything that would get the Pandorica away from here without causing the entire army to rise up against us?”

“Rather dramatic, aren’t you?” the Doctor said, turning and striding away. “Let’s reconvene at the Tardis, shall we?”

“I don’t want to leave her,” Rory said.

“No, you never do. But that’s all right. It’s for the best, really. Now catch up,” the Doctor flung over his shoulder.

Rory grimaced and then ran after the Doctor, using his night vision to avoid running into things. He wondered how the Doctor was doing it. Then the Doctor ran headlong into a tree and answered his unasked question.

“Let me help,” Rory said and sighed. “You’re rather bumbly right now, aren’t you?”

“What an atrocious slander,” the Doctor said. “I stride elegantly at all times.”

“You’re getting a black eye,” Rory said and spotted the Tardis up ahead. “Come on, I’ll fix you up.”

Rory supported the Doctor for a moment or two while the other man grumbled at being supported and then produced a key that let them into the Tardis.

Rory wondered if the Tardis ever stayed the same for more than one incarnation of the Doctor. But it was the Tardis and as long as it stayed in one time and place while he was in it, he wanted to be there more than any place in the world.

A woman was standing at the console, anxiously scanning it.

“You’re back,” she yelled at the sound of the door opening and started to run around the console, stopping short when she saw Rory. “Who are you and what have you done to the Doctor?”

“I’m Rory Williams,” Rory said wearily. He was beginning to understand the Doctor’s hatred of having to explain everything all the time. “I haven’t done anything to him; he’s hit his head on a tree like a great big space idiot.”

“I would resent that,” the Doctor said, sagging a little, “if I was feeling better. It’s fine, Sarah-Jane, Rory’s going to travel with me one day.”

“Are we in Rome?” she asked, looking at Rory’s clothes curiously. “I would already know except you locked me in here and went exploring by yourself!”

Rory raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, well, I’m sorry, Sarah. I needed to find out where we were first. Jelly baby?”

The Doctor fumbled in his coat and Sarah-Jane batted away the white bag he somehow managed to untangle from his pockets and scarf.

“Don’t try to bribe your way out of it, Doctor.” She got closer and saw his face. “You’re hurt, oh, Doctor, we need to fix you up.”

“I’m a nurse,” Rory said and sat the Doctor down on the floor.

“A centurion nurse?” she said, looking puzzled.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “Can you bring me some water and bandages, please?” 

He spoke loudly, hoping the Tardis would hear him. It seemed to work because Sarah-Jane was back in a very short amount of time.

“Thank you, Sarah,” he said.

“Sarah-Jane,” she said sharply.

“Sorry,” he said, looking at the Doctor in confusion, who simply smiled at him. “Uh, could you hold his head for me?”

“Yes,” she said, moving into position. 

“Do you have a penlight or can the sonic do as well?” Rory asked the Doctor, who handed over the sonic. “Thanks. It’s not going to blow up the Tardis or anything if I simply use it to check your pupil dilation, is it?”

“I checked my own dilation,” the Doctor said cheerily. “Normal as normal can be.”

“I’ll do my own diagnosis, thanks,” Rory said. “I reiterate, am I about to blow up the Tardis?”

“You’re a bit more insistent than I remember,” the Doctor said. “Good for you, a bit annoying though. You’re fine, just fine.”

“It’s been over a hundred years,” Rory said, shining the sonic’s light into the Doctor’s eyes and was relieved to see he didn’t have a concussion. Probably. Rory was probably more adept than most, but not exactly an expert on Timelord physiology. “I am going to change.”

“Not as much as me I bet,” the Doctor said, grinning again.

This Doctor seemed to have a Cheshire Cat complex.

Rory put a cold compress on the Doctor’s eye and figured that would probably be the best he could do.

“You need to keep the swelling down. Now I have to get back to the Pandorica. I can’t leave it there. That army doesn’t seem to quite understand its importance.”

“Armies never do,” the Doctor said, jumping up and flinging the compress so that it landed on the other side of the room. Sarah-Jane followed its trajectory and picked it up with a long-suffering look. Rory knew how she felt. The Doctor had worn it for all about twelve seconds. Still, maybe that was all a Timelord needed. “I’ve got a plan!”

“An actual plan or an ‘I want the little humans to think I have a plan’ plan?” Rory asked skeptically.

“How many of me have you met?” the Doctor asked, pushing buttons and flipping levers and probably concentrating on about a million things at once.

“Six, including you,” Rory said, doing a quick count in his head. “One of you twice.”

“That was two mes ago,” the Doctor cried. “I’m even better now, so never fear. I’ll get Amy out of this.”

“Heaven help this Amy,” Sarah-Jane muttered.

Rory looked askance at her.

“Sarah-Jane,” he said musingly. “I’ve heard the Doctor mention you.”

“I don’t want to know,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to know how he goes or what happens to me.”

“It might not even happen,” Rory said. “Time’s a bit wonky right now.”

“Isn’t it always?” she said, grinning at him.

“Around the Doctor, yes.” He smiled back.

“What is the Pandorica?” she asked.

“A box with my fiancée stuffed inside,” he said idly, wondering what the Doctor was up to.

“What?” she asked, sounding horrified.

“It’s better than it sounds,” he promised, going over to the Doctor. “Doctor, you’re not taking off, are you?”

“Can’t execute the plan without it,” the Doctor said and then they started to dematerialize.

Rory held the console and prayed they didn’t end up on Mars.

With a thud they landed and he glanced outside.

“Um, we appear to be on Mars,” the Doctor said, looking at the scanner.

“Take. Me. Back,” Rory gritted out.

“No problem!” the Doctor cried, whirling around again and they went on another ride. “Right place this time.”

“Are you sure?” asked Rory.

“Spain, Earth, 879. Five minutes after we left. Stop doubting me.”

“We were just on Mars,” Rory said, running to the door and looking out. 

“Right, well, fine, but I’m here now. And I’ve got a black eye,” the Doctor said, sounding and looking wounded. “And I’ve got a plan. With magnets.”

“Magnets?” Sarah-Jane asked.

“Magnets,” confirmed the Doctor.

“Uh, Doctor,” Rory said, “we’re literally sitting on top of the Pandorica and the army’s very much awake now.”

“I see,” the Doctor said, putting his head out. “Isn’t that lovely? I’m getting better and better.”

“Some might see this as a step back,” Sarah-Jane said, poking her head out between them. 

“Here come the arrows,” Rory said, pushing them all back inside and slamming the door.

Several arrows thudded against the door where their heads had been.

“What’s your brilliant plan?” Sarah-Jane asked.

The Doctor was already back at the console, doing something that made Rory’s teeth hurt and his teeth were plastic.

“An army can’t fight without weapons,” the Doctor said.

“An army is a weapon,” Rory said, peeking out the door again.

He saw shimmering in the air, like when it was hot out. The sky was getting lighter and he didn’t have to use his night vision anymore. The army’s men were all grasping at the ground as their armor appeared to lift itself into the air and attempt to fly toward the Tardis.

“I think that will rather take the fight out of them,” the Doctor said, sounding extremely satisfied with himself.

“You never do anything the same way twice, do you?” Rory asked.

“What would the fun in that be?” the Doctor said, flinging his scarf further around his neck and stepping out the door onto the surface of the Pandorica. 

He waved at Rory and Sarah-Jane to join him.

Rory stepped out, adjusting his armor so he looked properly attired. He had a feeling he’d have been cast out of his old legion for the lack of care he took in his appearance these days.

“I believe you have the floor,” Sarah-Jane said, nudging him as the army all looked at them with slacked jaws, obviously disoriented and trying to keep their armor together.

Rory stepped forward, putting one hand on his sword. The men before him lifted their torches, illuminating him with a flickering glow in the pre-dawn light.

“Hear this now,” he cried out in their native tongue. “This Pandorica is considered sacred and holy. Any attempts to harm or open it will result in swift punishment. Do not test my words. You have been warned.” He turned and walked back into the Tardis. “Doctor, can the Tardis magnetize only the Pandorica?”

The Doctor and Sarah-Jane exchanged looks and came in after him.

“Yes,” said the Doctor.

“Then I think the grand old sight of the Tardis flying the box out of here would be beautiful, don’t you?”

The Doctor smiled again.

“I like your mind, Rory Williams. Let’s give it a try.”

So the Pandorica flew again. This time by magnets or something that Rory didn’t really understand for all the books he’d read and the words the Doctor babbled. Or maybe it was really the same thing and the Doctor just didn’t want to admit it.

“I think this will do,” Rory said.

He’d never really surveyed it by air before, but he was very familiar with the layout of this entire continent and if his history – or the schedules he’d stolen - was serving him correctly – which it was very likely not to do – there would be a legion or an approximation of one - Rory remembered the real legions with something like pride and something like revulsion – due along this road at any time. They’d do very well for taking the box back and keeping it safe until Constantinople was sacked again.

The Doctor sat both boxes down with slightly more care than normal and Rory hopped off the Tardis.

“Goodbye, Sarah-Jane,” he said. “I’m glad to have met you.”

“Thank you,” Sarah-Jane said, giving him a one-sided hug.

“Until next time,” he told the Doctor. “Please, don’t forget to forget me.”

“If you insist,” the Doctor said, a little grumpily.

Sarah-Jane looked confused, but didn’t say anything.

Rory sat on the Pandorica and watched the Tardis dissipate into the air. He stretched out on his side and patted the box.

“Together again,” he said and rested for awhile.

When he heard the legion start to come, he’d get up and be properly, oracle-ly mysterious. But for now, he was going to rest. As much as plastic-ly possible.


	8. Six

Six

1000 AD

Rory slipped back into the shadows while the men were examining the Pandorica. He’d managed to incarcerate himself with the box in its latest prison/storage. He didn’t really know what city they were in. He was even a little bit off as to the date. Long ago he had discovered that there was some sort of internal clock in his brain, because he was never that far off, but he’d been getting a bit fuzzy as of late and was worried that he might be running down. Running down with half of the time still left. It would not do, so he was trying to avoid contact with people, or exerting himself, or – especially - having to defend the box bodily.

So long as these fellows were simply examining it and copying the sigils down for later study – also having spirited arguments about the existence of the centurion who supposedly guarded the box – he wasn’t really worried. He could feel there were worse times ahead.

The men finally grew tired and left and Rory came out from his hiding place. He was about to settle in for a long night and go over all the arteries in the body as he was at that part in his mental revision timetable. But there was a loud banging noise and he melted back into the shadows, hand on his sword. It wasn’t quite as nice as the one he’d lost back when the Doctor had saved him from the Muslim army. This one made him feel less like a Roman, which – sometimes - felt like a good thing. But his sword wasn’t as plastic as the rest of him and wouldn’t have lasted forever in any case. So he’d replaced it and spent years getting as used to it as the old one. 

The doors flung open and a large assortment of people marched into the room. It looked like the governor of the city – or whatever the term was for the office held, it was all melting together in his head – and his guards. Accompanying them was a man with a shocking head of curly blonde hair and the ugliest multi-color, multi-fabric, multi-everything, coat Rory had ever seen. There was also a petite girl with short brunette hair and an impatient look on her face.

“Thank you, Hildegard,” the man said, waving his hand dismissively. 

“His Honor’s name is-” one of the guards tried to say.

“I’ve decided this suits him better,” the man said, interrupting him. “Now I wish to be alone. Oh, and Peri can stay. The rest of you must leave my presence.”

“As Your Excellency wishes,” Hildegard – for lack of a better name – replied, bowing low. “Let us know how we can further assist you.”

“I shall, I shall,” said the man indifferently.

The rest of the group left and the doors shut with a loud bang. Rory held his position in silence, waiting to see what the stranger would do.

“Rory!” yelled the man. “Rory the Roman, I demand you to show yourself at once.”

Rory didn’t move.

“Doctor,” the woman said, pulling on his arm, “maybe he isn’t here.”

Rory relaxed.

“Nonsense,” the Doctor cried. “Don’t be ridiculous, Peri. If the Pandorica is here, Rory is here. It’s that simple. Now come out,” he shouted again. “Don’t waste my time even if you have all the time in the world.”

Rory raised his eyebrow and took off his helmet, coming out of the shadows behind them.

“I guess only you would be idiot enough to try to pull off that coat,” he said quietly, enjoying watching them jump in the air.

“Rory!” the Doctor roared and pulled him into a big hug. Rory returned it somewhat hesitantly. This Doctor was quite…different. “Happy anniversary!”

“Anniversary?” asked Rory in confusion.

The Doctor pulled back and grinned broadly at him.

“Yes, your anniversary! Your time is half way up! Aren’t you glad?”

“Um, you’re off a couple of decades,” Rory said. 

“Nonsense,” the Doctor said again. “You’re off, you plastic man.”

“Maybe by a couple of years since I don’t technically really know the date of my anniversary and neither do you. But if we’re going by what I’m going to tell you in three bodies then it’s not for about fifty years. So, sorry, Mr. Timelord.”

“I told you not to bother with your hair, Peri,” the Doctor said, looking disgruntled and turning on the woman beside him.

“Don’t you dare blame me, Doctor,” she snapped. “I’m not the one who took fifty minutes deciding which way he wanted his cat pin to look on his lapel.”

“Yes, well, that’s beside the point,” the Doctor said, putting his arm around her. “Rory, this is Peri. She travels with me now.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” Rory said, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you, Peri.”

“Is it true that you really are made out of plastic and have been waiting for your true love to wake up for two thousand years?” she asked.

“Uh, sort of. But it’s not really like that,” he said, feeling embarrassed. “I’m only halfway through. Yes, I guess, but…I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“I would,” she said.

“Thanks…”

The Doctor strode around, looking at everything, pulling a velvet robe off a suit of armor and draping it around Rory’s shoulders.

“Early or not, we’re here to celebrate,” he said emphatically.

“You broke into a high security vault and impersonated royalty to celebrate my anniversary?” Rory asked, highly confused.

“Naturally,” the Doctor said, grinning at him. “We needed a bit of a party and I knew exactly where to go. Oddly enough the Tardis seemed to agree as here we are.”

“Why didn’t you forget me?” Rory asked pointedly.

The Doctor shifted a bit uncomfortably.

“Well, it’s all a bit relative, time streams and all that, and I was in a hurry. Oh, what does it matter, we’re here to have a party.”

He smiled as if his logic was impenetrable.

“Doctor, I don’t eat,” Rory pointed out.

“We do,” the Doctor said, gesturing to himself and Peri.

“Lovely party when the celebrant can’t even participate,” Rory said, though he was starting to feel strangely happy.

“We’ve accounted for that,” the Doctor said and pulled a genuine Christmas cracker out of his pockets. “Go on, pull.”

Rory hadn’t seen one of those for two lifetimes and about eight hundred years. It made him feel like a little boy at Christmas time. He grabbed hold and pulled. It popped with an amazing crack and he grinned. Inside was a ridiculous paper hat and he popped it on in place of his helmet.

Peri held up a…disposable camera and took a picture. It was all too ridiculous for words, but Rory didn’t want to change a thing unless Amy could really be there as well.

They all settled down with a blanket on the floor – and the Doctor had produced it out of his pockets so maybe there really was something to the hideous coat after all – and kept their backs to the Pandorica.

There were little sweets and things that Peri and the Doctor munched on and Rory had the robe on and his hat and it was altogether the strangest repast he’d ever partaken – or, actually, not partaken - in. Peri asked him all about Amy and he told her about growing up in Leadworth and meeting the Doctor and traveling. He enjoyed being able to talk about - and made the Doctor triple-swear he’d forget it all this time – all the things he’d done and people he’d met and the people he’d loved. The Doctor laughed a lot and called them names and tried to outdo Rory on every story he told. It was marvelous.

They were at it for several hours – Rory found out this was the Doctor’s sixth body - and they were interrupted a few times by banging on the door, but the Doctor always went over and poked his head out and yelled at whoever wanted to come in. But in the end, it couldn’t last forever, and they had to say goodbye.

“I am worried that I’m a bit off,” Rory said. “I don’t seem to remember things quite as well and I’m…almost tired. Do you think I’m shutting down?”

The Doctor pulled out his sonic and scanned Rory until he felt like his head was buzzing with the sound.

“Yes, I dare say you are,” the Doctor said. “You really shouldn’t be at all, you know. I’m not quite sure why you aren’t. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Neither do your sentences, Doctor,” Peri told him, rolling her eyes. 

Rory had a brief thought that rolling one’s eyes seemed to be a companion of the Doctor’s main function.

“I’m supposed to be operated by a signal, right?” Rory said. “But the signal has been cut off for years. Why is it happening now?”

“Time always catches up to itself,” the Doctor said. “You’re just a step ahead, is all. But we can fix that. Patch a fake signal through; make you even better than before.”

“I’ll still remember everything, right?” Rory asked, suddenly nervous. “I won’t go all Auton or anything? I won’t forget Amy or how to use my sword or anything else I’ve learned?”

“No, you won’t feel a thing,” the Doctor said, putting the sonic to work again.

Only Rory did feel a thing, he felt a lot of things. It felt like five years’ worth of workouts at the same time, like what he imagined a colonoscopy felt like, like he was melting into himself.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” he said tightly, trying not to scream.

“I am sorry,” the Doctor said. “Only it can’t be helped.”

“I didn’t feel a thing,” Rory said, rolling his own eyes. “The screwdriver worked wonders, thanks.”

“It’s not a screwdriver,” the Doctor said, looking wounded. “I haven’t had one of those in years. This is a sonic lance, you dimwitted Auton!”

“Right…uh, sorry,” said Rory.

“You are forgiven. Now you’ll last much longer,” the Doctor said, putting his ‘lance’ away with a flourish. “I can’t say for sure how long. Time is persistent. But, so are you, I gather,” he said, smiling at Rory.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Rory said and turned to Peri. “Thank you so much for this, it’s been…amazing. I can’t even tell you what it means to me.”

“You’re my hero,” Peri said.

“Excuse me,” the Doctor said, sounding a bit outraged. “What am I, smashed Rodenarian beetles?”

“A person can admire more than one person, Doctor,” Peri said.

“Not as much,” the Doctor grumbled.

“Rory is a hero,” Peri said.

“Of course he is,” the Doctor spluttered. “But you travel with me.”

“Come on,” Peri said long-sufferingly, “let’s go and you can take me somewhere fabulous that will dazzle me into thinking you’re the best thing since they reversed the green house effect.”

“They did what?” Rory asked.

“Long story,” the Doctor said. “I wasn’t there, no matter what anyone else may tell you on the matter.”

“Okay, Doctor,” Rory said.

Peri gave him a hug which he accepted gladly and then the Doctor gave him one as well.

“Happy anniversary, Rory the Roman,” the Doctor said, taking Rory’s party hat off. “Sorry, have to take this with me. Gotta keep up the timelines, you know.”

Which was rather ridiculous since everything was so completely messed up anyway and it was a _paper hat_. But what would be the point of arguing with a Timelord, especially one as cantankerous as this version of the Doctor seemed to be?

“Speaking of which, do not refuse to forget me this time. I mean it,” said Rory sternly.

“Fine, fine, fine,” the Doctor said, brushing the matter off.

“I’ll remind him,” Peri said.

“Thank you,” said Rory.

Rory went back into the shadows while the Doctor banged on the door and demanded to be let out. It was a fairly short time before he was, causing Rory to think people had been hanging out in the hallway, afraid to go anywhere less they incur ‘His Excellency’s’ wrath. He smiled and sat down against the Pandorica.

“He’s quite a man, the Doctor,” he said softly, and then leaned his head back against Amy’s prison. “Happy anniversary, Amy.”


	9. Nine Round Two

1147 AD

Rory was tired of fanatical monks. He’d met at least five so far – not counting that monastery mess back in 1054 - but Rudolf was the worst of them all. It was a little bit ridiculous, but he was thinking about writing an essay or something listing all the things that would be better uses of people’s time than persecuting Jews. Rory wasn’t sure what Rudolf’s motives were but he kept on saying preposterous things about the Jews not contributing monetarily to the Crusades. That was a whole other essay Rory wanted to write.

Unfortunately, Rudolf’s mania extended not solely to the Jews but to mysterious artifacts that nobody had been able to open in the last thousand years. The Pandorica had lately been on a tour of sorts. The current Pope seemed to think it was a sign of good fortune and that if the people were to actually see it, that it would cause them to get all excited about the Crusade. Rory was trying to think of it as a walking tour. There really wasn’t much he could do about it without over-exposing himself and his best weapon was mystery. 

He did feel at the top of his game though, which was a very good thing. The Doctor’s upgrade or whatever it had been, was working like a charm. All of Rory’s extra plastic features, strength, vision, hearing, were working fine. And all of his learned skills, like his languages, ambidexterity, the fighting arts, and medicinal knowledge were all still intact. He was almost raring for a fight – he was never raring for a fight – and if Rudolf persisted in his claims that the Pandorica was of the devil, Rory was going to let him have it.

He still didn’t feel like much of a warrior though. Rory the Rabbit was a much better nickname for himself, he thought. He often amused himself by coming up with different titles. There was currently a heated debate among scholars as to whether to call him the Last Centurion or the Lone Centurion. He favored the latter himself, but he’d discovered that legends don’t get to name themselves or have any input – which was logical – but it seemed unfair somehow. In the long run it probably wouldn’t be important. He hoped that someday the fascination with the Pandorica would wane and that he himself would be lost to the mists of time – ideally, not literally – and he and Amy could get on with waiting for the Doctor. That’s what they did. They waited.

But Rory had to wait a little bit more actively than he would like, which is why he was usually lamenting the fact that every time he managed to get the Pandorica harnessed and ready to move at a moment’s – try hour’s – notice, somebody would unearth it and rearrange all his plans. That was the only nice part about the touring Pandorica. It was moved by other people. He moved along with it, trying to stay out of sight most of the time. It wasn’t until Rudolf had physically tried to open the box that he’d stepped in – from a distance – acting as a sniper anytime someone tried to get too close. It was working well, but Rory felt horrible because it seemed like every time Rudolf was thwarted from the Pandorica, he just went back to persecuting the Jews.

Rory hated having to make decisions like that: the good of the now or the good of the future, Amy or the people, one time period or all of time, one planet or the universe. He could go on like that forever. He empathized with the Doctor more than ever. Still, there he was, the Lone Last Centurion, and that was his purpose.

He’d started freeing people locked up by Rudolf and his men, though. Either they were locked in stocks in the town square and that was very easy to arrange an escape from, or they were in jail cells and one good shot to the lock would open the doors. He hoped that would help make a difference other than making Rudolf go crazy and start killing people or something extreme like that.

It had been about four days since Rudolf’s last attempt to open the box and Rory guessed that he wouldn’t try again. Not by himself anyway. They were calling a town meeting and Rory hoped that the men from the Pandorica’s guard who had been dispatched to warn the Pope of the situation would arrive with help before this escalated any further. He really didn’t want to reveal himself.

“People, I beg you to listen to me,” Rudolf ranted below. Rory was perched in a tree, on the hill close behind them. “People, we have a serious problem on our hands. There is division and conspiracy among us. There is betrayal in the air. Can you, who are loyal citizens and Christians, truly sit there and do nothing? I think not. I ask you to help me. Take hold of this box and cast it into the ocean. Let us be rid of its menace.”

Rory wanted to be sick. Unfortunately – actually, fortunately – that wasn’t something Autons did. But he was a bit worried. The people were being stirred up and muttering among themselves. That was never a good sign. Rory debated whether or not to flip his hand open, but as good a shot as he had become, he didn’t want to take the chance of hitting anybody he wasn’t aiming at.

There was a further commotion from the back of the crowd and Rory scanned it, thankful for his eyes. There were men coming into the town and approaching the town square where the Pandorica was displayed and Rudolf was ranting. There were guards and a man in a robe marking him high in the clergy. Another man was riding beside him. It was the Doctor, the ninth one, and he looked absolutely out of place. There was no mistaking him.

Rory felt better immediately. While he’d handled countless situations like this for over a millennium without the Doctor’s help, the times when the man showed up – whichever man – were always better.

Whispers followed the men as they moved forward. Rory didn’t have to strain hard to hear.

“Bernard of Clairvaux. Who is that with him? What’s he doing here? Bernard. The Pope must have sent him. What’s going on? Who’s the other one? Bernard of Clairvaux.”

That was impressive company the Doctor was keeping. Rory got down out of the tree and prepared to get closer.

The horses reached the front of the crowd and Bernard swung off his horse, striding close to the less confident looking Rudolf.

“What heresy is this?” he boomed. “What lies are you spurting? Why are you harassing these people?”

“The box is evil,” Rudolf blurted out, sounding terrified. Rory noticed he didn’t mention anything about trying to turn people against the Jews. “We must destroy it.”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor said, still on his horse, guiding it closer to the box. “A prettier box, I never saw. What a shame it would be to try and throw it away without knowing what it was, don’t you think?”

“No one’s been able to get in there for a thousand years,” Rudolf gasped out. “Who are you?”

“I’m the Doctor. Hello.”

“What authority do you have?” asked Rudolf.

“My own,” the Doctor said calmly. “Old Barney here was good enough to let me tag along. I haven’t ridden a horse in hundreds of years. It was fun, but I’m thinking massage parlor for my next stop.”

Everyone gaped at him and Rory smiled to himself.

Even Bernard looked curious.

“Doctor,” he said, “shall we not examine Rudolf’s testimony to see if it be true?”

“Examine away and be my guest,” the Doctor said, getting off his horse. “I’m going to see if the pretty box has a latch you lot can’t see.”

Rory grimaced. There definitely was a drawback to the whole ‘Doctor forgetting everything’ thing.

He stepped out from behind the box, sword drawn.

“I will not let that happen,” he said firmly. “I shall defend this box even against you, Doctor.”

“You’re a fine one,” the Doctor said, looking closely at him. “You’re not human either.”

“That is debatable,” Rory said wryly. “Doctor, there are four things I’d like to say to you. One, Rory. Two, don’t open the box. Three, I’m not getting into the Tardis with you so don’t bother asking. Four, you are to forget me as soon as you leave.” The Doctor blinked and Rory turned away to Bernard, hardly believing in – but loving – his own audacity. “Thank you for coming. This man is persecuting loyal citizens, specifically the Jewish people. This box is under my protection as well as the Pope’s. Care to argue?”

“Rory!” the Doctor roared, grabbing him by the shoulders and hugging him.

Rory pulled away.

“You’re rather ruining my image, Doctor,” he said, moving his sword so that it wasn’t in danger of cutting off the Doctor’s ears.

And, no, he wasn’t thinking about how that could be an improvement.

“Silly humans,” the Doctor said, but he obviously understood, because he stepped back and wiped the grin from his face.

“I am glad to see you though,” Rory said under his breath.

“Mutual,” said the Doctor.

“You would be…?” Bernard asked.

“A bit of a debate about that,” the Doctor said. “Though Centurion will always do the trick.”

“I guard the Pandorica,” Rory said. “That is all anyone need know. Do not attempt to open or destroy it.”

“It is under the Pope’s protection,” Bernard said. “I have strict instructions on that point. I shall have it brought back to a secure location.”

“Thank you,” Rory said, inclining his head gravely. 

He stepped back behind the box, but stayed where he could hear everything that was happening; granted, he could do that from a lot further away if need be.

“Rudolf, this is mania,” Bernard said. “You must cease this fanaticism.”

“It is the truth,” Rudolf said. “We must stop the heathens and drive them from the holy places and this rabble will do nothing to help.”

“An army to crusade is one thing,” Bernard said. “Persecution and meaningless violence is another. You will be taken back to your monastery. Guards.” Rory heard the sounds of a slight scuffle and then Bernard addressed the crowd. “Hear this now, on order from the Pope. There shall be no more prosecution against the Jewish people. This box will be taken and put in protective custody. The Crusade lives on!”

The people started to cheer and Rory supposed that the better of the battles had been won. He wasn’t here to avert history; in fact, it would be much better if he could keep it the same. No matter the bits that he didn’t like.

The Doctor stepped around the box and casually leaned against it.

“Watch it,” the Doctor said. “People are gonna think there’s a black hole on the other side of this box. Then, one day, someone will think to look around it and see you’re still here.”

“I’m not usually,” Rory said. “I was waiting for you.”

“You holding up all right?” the Doctor asked.

“The Six upgrade is working out swell,” Rory said dryly.

“I don’t like this numbering thing you’ve got going on,” the Doctor said.

“I call you all Doctor to your face, but you have to admit that with so many of you and only one me, numbering is an efficient way of keeping you all straight.”

“Others have done the same,” the Doctor admitted. “I don’t like my past much.”

“I think you like it better than your present,” Rory said.

“No more psycho analysis,” the Doctor said, but he was smiling.

“Did you ever make it to 2005?” Rory asked and then remembered that this might be a Nine earlier than his first Nine. 

Confusing? Oh yes.

“What? Oh yeah. Picked up Rose and now we’ve got Jack, too. The Tardis is almost too crowded.”

“I highly doubt that,” said Rory.

“Shut it, and you better get going before someone sees you,” the Doctor said, making a scattering motion with his hand.

“Thanks for the help,” said Rory.

“Was all you today,” the Doctor said.

“Right, and you will promise to forget me…”

“I always do what’s right,” the Doctor said tightly. “No matter the cost.”

Rory felt a bit uncomfortable for a minute.

“I’ll see you?”

“Most likely. You seem to have almost a magnetizing effect on the Tardis,” the Doctor said.

“I think she probably understands what I’m trying to do and wants to help,” Rory said, trying to remember exactly when he’d found the temerity to start talking about the Tardis like he knew what it/she was.

It probably also helped that he would be consistently alive through two thousand years’ worth of history.

“Likely,” the Doctor said, then rubbed his hands together. “Right, I’d better get back. Rose and Jack have probably converted the whole clergy into belly dancers or something rubbish like that.”

“Right…”

“Barney, let’s hit that road,” the Doctor yelled, going back around to the other side of the box.

Rory permitted himself a moment of leaning against the Pandorica. It had been too long since he’d really been with her.

“And here we go again,” he said.


	10. Three

1251 AD

“I can’t thank you enough,” Rory said. “This is more important than you know.”

“I am only sorry for the wrongs my brethren have been doing. Please believe we are not all like that,” the young man said. 

Rory didn’t know his name, but he knew the man was good. This young priest had almost singlehandedly saved the Pandorica from falling into the hands of the Inquisitors and personally arranged passage for it on a boat to the Orient.

“I can well believe it,” Rory assured him. “I wish all men had faith like yours.”

“It is possible for all men,” the priest said. “I wish you good fortune and safe journey.”

“My thanks,” Rory said, almost grateful for a chance to use Latin again. He had a feeling that it would be engraved in his head forever. “Be well.”

“God go with you.”

Rory slipped into the shadows of the Pandorica as it was lifted into the hold. It was a bit dangerous traveling like this, but he didn’t really feel like he could keep the Pandorica on the main continent anymore. The Inquisition wasn’t quite in full force, but it was getting there. Wars and fights for succession were happening all over the place. It was a dangerous time to be a mysterious stranger with an enigmatic box. His only fear was that somehow their boat would be lost and the Pandorica would sink to the bottom of the ocean. He still hadn’t quite decided what he would do if that happened. He had a brief thought that he probably wouldn’t be able to withstand the pressures of the deep, even if he didn’t need to breathe. His best bet would be to wait until he could find the Doctor again and see if the Tardis could get down there. 

Hopefully, he wouldn’t need to worry about that. But it was his job to think about these kinds of things. 

The boat creaked and shifted and Rory looked around nervously. He’d never liked traveling by water, even on the sturdier boats of his time. His human time, that is, not his plastic time, those boats were even less safe. It was damp and he wrapped his cloak around him securely. He did feel the cold even if it didn’t really affect him. Still, he felt more human when he was approximating human behavior. He felt the ship pull away from the dock and the sailors running around overhead as the captain called orders. It would be some weeks before they reached their destination and while he could probably get away with not being called a stowaway – the captain seemed to be a good friend of Rory’s priest - he didn’t really want to be seen.

The days seemed to melt into one another. In one way, that is; Rory could almost always feel that clock in his head, counting out the days and hours and minutes, keeping him on track. He spent a lot of time reciting dates in his head to keep them straight, and conjugating Greek and Spanish verbs, really brushing up on his Mandarin, naming all the major organs and bones in the body and the different treatments for whatever disease he could think of. He also spent a lot of time being thankful he couldn’t get seasick.

They were about a week into their voyage when someone found him. Rory had been lost in thought and didn’t notice there was someone examining the box, which was against orders since he’d heard the captain say there would be strict consequences for anyone who tampered with the cargo. It wasn’t until the man rounded the corner, muttering about the sigils that Rory looked up, feeling - and probably looking - very startled. The other man looked the same and Rory put his left hand to his sword which he’d started hanging on the right side of his body – oh, about a thousand years ago - since he primarily used his right hand for shooting.

“Who are you?” the man asked, finally shutting his gaping mouth.

“A guard. You’re not supposed to be down here,” Rory said sternly.

“Ah, yes, well, I couldn’t really help it. This box is so fascinating. I’ve heard rumors, but I hadn’t thought they could be true. I would like to sketch it. I would love to study it. Can’t we keep this our little secret?” begged the man.

“It is not for the general public,” Rory insisted.

“I am hardly the public,” the man said a bit huffily. “Marco Polo may not be a grand name, but it is not unknown.”

Rory felt his eyes go a bit wide. He’d met some very famous people and some very important people, but Marco Polo was definitely both. He had the strangest urge to tell the man that a game had been named after him.

“You must understand,” he said, “this box is of vital importance. It cannot be harmed or opened. I must guard it.”

“I won’t even touch it,” Marco promised. “I won’t even mention to the captain that you’re down here.”

“He knows I’m down here,” Rory lied, rather smoothly he thought.

“Perhaps, but I think not. Your clothes rather mark the period that the mysterious Centurion is supposed to have appeared in.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Rory said.

“I’ll just go get the captain then, shall I?”

“If you’d like to reveal that you were down here unauthorized,” Rory said smugly.

“Then you’ll let me look at it?” asked Marco. 

Rory pondered what was best here. After all, he doubted Marco Polo would use the box for nefarious means. Plus, they were on a boat; it wasn’t like Rory could escape some place and take the box with him. He’d also rather not get into an altercation with the captain and perhaps have to kill everyone on board – including a very important historical figure that still had things he needed to do - then sail a boat he had only rudimentary knowledge of how to sail – why hadn’t the Doctor given him any books on that? - to a country that still really didn’t like foreigners coming into it.

“Only you and you may not touch it,” Rory said, patting his sword for emphasis.

“Thank you, my good sir,” Marco said. “We shall have a bond of silence between us.”

That didn’t actually sound very nice, but Rory didn’t question it. 

So Marco started coming down into the hold every night while the crew were mostly sleeping in their bunks on the other side of the hold. A skeleton crew would be up top keeping watch. They didn’t talk a lot, mostly because they didn’t want to alert anyone to anything untoward happening. 

Rory also felt very uncomfortable because he was forced to almost constantly put on his Centurion act and while he’d developed it down to a science, he still didn’t like it and he actively worked at not liking it. He felt that the moment he did, the moment he embraced his role as the Last Centurion – that name had won out in the end, though there were still some factions of scholars who resolutely stuck to Lone Centurion – he would be lost forever. Rory Williams would cease to be and Roranicus or something would stiffen into automatic Auton mode and Amy would never really be able to see him as himself, even if he did manage to save her.

He was getting very melancholy in his old age. If he was anything like the Doctor he’d start acting like an idiot, but then, that would really mess with the oracle image as well. What a bother it all was.

Marco Polo was really rather nice though. He would ask questions about the box, which Rory would mostly refuse to answer unless it involved actual documented occurrences that the man could find out on his own through research. Marco had a lot of stories and when he would get bored of looking at the box and not feel like going upstairs yet, he’d tell them to Rory who liked the human contact, even if he tried to remain stoic throughout it all.

This went on for several weeks and then they had a storm. It was actually quite amazing that they hadn’t had one before then. Rory was nervous and all the passengers had been ordered below deck and so he was even more nervous with all the people rummaging about, even if they hadn’t ventured into the Pandorica’s storage yet. The storm raged for a whole night and water started to seep through the floorboards overhead. Anytime one of the crew would come down into the hold he brought a wave of water with him and bad news. Two men were lost overboard.

Then there was a loud crash that overpowered even the noise of the storm. Rory almost rushed to see what it was along with everyone else, but restrained himself. The passengers gathered below the hatch door and clamored to know what the matter was, what had happened, etc. It was a long time before the first mate stuck his head down and said that there was some strange blue box that had fallen and was on fire and they were trying to put it out and to pipe down. Only he used stronger language that even a plastic person wouldn’t repeat.

At that point Rory did make to go up on deck, trying to create somewhat of an impression as he appeared out of the hold and clambered onto deck. A bit hard when everything was slippery wet and he’d never been good on boats. Still, he imagined that a full Roman centurion suddenly bursting out from the hold in a storm might look rather good. 

Looking around he spotted the Tardis immediately and it was on fire. The rain and waves were making short work of that, but he was worried about the Doctor and any possible companions.

“Did anyone come out of the box?” he asked, grabbing a nearby sailor.

“Yon lady,” the man said, looking frightened and pointing toward the captain who was struggling with a young woman.

Rory strode over and broke the captain’s hold on the woman’s arm. She was young and blonde and fighting rather desperately.

“Where’s the Doctor?” he asked her sharply. 

She swallowed and looked at him for a few seconds before answering.

“He’s still in the Tardis,” she said. “We have to get him out, but this idiot isn’t letting me anywhere near it!”

She glared at the captain who was looking rather irritated and harassed and Rory imagined that fighting to keep a ship afloat through a storm was trial enough without dealing with fiery blue boxes, feisty girls, and sudden Romans.

“I will get him,” Rory told her. “What’s your name?”

“Jo.”

“I’ll get him out, Jo. Just be prepared to help, got it?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding and they hurried to the Tardis, which was now mostly smoking instead of burning.

Rory opened the door and peered inside, using his eyes to adjust to all the smoke. The Doctor was leaning against the console. Rory motioned for Jo to hold the doors open and then rushed inside, grabbing a hold of the man and dragging him to the outside. He knew the Doctor breathed a bit differently but Rory didn’t really think that even a Timelord could do with being in the smoke for long, especially while unconscious.

Once outside Rory shut tight the Tardis door to prevent anyone else from getting in there and he and Jo carried the Doctor down into the hold. Rory pulled his sword – taking care not to skewer his charge - and silently dared anyone to approach them. They stayed back, mostly because of Marco Polo, and Rory put the Doctor down next to the Pandorica.

“Doctor,” he called, opening the man’s eyelids and looking at his pupils and checking his body for breaks or bumps on the head. “Doctor!”

“I’m quite awake, thank you,” the Doctor said and Rory looked at him more thoroughly 

This had to be the third doctor that Two had complained about. He was wearing a velvet jacket with a cloak slung around his shoulders and ruffles. Oh, the ruffles were glorious. Like a Jimmy Hendrix concert. He was tall with white hair, certainly the oldest looking of any of the Doctors Rory had seen. His nose rivaled Rory’s own which gave Rory a definite thrill of satisfaction and he had the strangest wish for a camera.

“What happened?” he asked.

“A slight miscalculation that brought us into contact with the rather irritable crew of a pirate ship,” the Doctor said, sitting up. “And who might you be?”

“It’s Rory.”

“Rory?” said the Doctor somewhat quizzically.

“Don’t tell me that erasing your memory so much has actually caused you to forget me?” said Rory.

Jo looked at him strangely but he ignored her.

“No, I remember you. I’ve only erased my memory once, try and remember which Doctor you’re talking to, there’s a good chap. What on earth are you doing here?”

“Moving the Pandorica to safety,” said Rory.

“Splendid atmosphere,” the Doctor replied, standing up and managing to look very imposing despite the soot on his shirt and wet hair. “Anything I can do since I’m here?”

“You might want to look to the Tardis,” Jo said. “It was on fire!”

The Doctor looked slightly worried, which always slightly worried Rory.

“Come on, Jo, Rory,” he said. “Let’s figure it out.”

They followed him up the stairs and back into the rain. Rory would have given Jo his cloak, but it was already soaking. The captain was battling with the wheel and that was probably the only reason he hadn’t come tearing down after them into the hold.

“She’ll be fine,” the Doctor said after opening the doors and looking inside. “She just needs a bit of rest.”

“She might not get it if this storm keeps up,” Jo said, looking up into the sky. “I feel like we’re going to turn over.”

“We just might,” the Doctor said. “If only the Tardis was functioning properly I could try and stabilize us.”

“The Tardis isn’t you, Doctor,” Rory said. “I’ve seen you save the world with a ball of string.”

And, really, sometime in the Doctor’s nine hundred plus years that had to be true.

“Thank you,” the Doctor said, inclining his head. “Well, let’s see what we can do.”

“That’s the spirit,” Jo said, sounding a bit perkier than before. 

Rory took them to the captain.

“Any idea on when the storm will dissipate?” he asked.

“It better soon or we’ll lose the main mast,” the captain grunted out.

“List our resources please, Rory,” the Doctor said.

“Sonic screwdriver, a sword, your brain, wet sailors, uh, Marco Polo’s on board…”

“Is he?” the Doctor said, sounding delighted. “Lead me to him, please.”

Rory led them all back downstairs and they found Marco Polo keeping the rest of the passengers from going crazy.

"Good to see you, old chap," the Doctor said, shaking his hand.

“Doctor!” Marco said. "You've changed."

"Yes, again," said the Doctor.

“Of course you know each other,” Rory said.

“Naturally,” Jo said, imitating his tone.

They looked at each other and smiled.

“Did you by any chance bring your maps with you?” the Doctor said after shooting his companion/future companion a look.

“Yes,” said Marco.

It all got very confusing after that. 

The Doctor was pouring over maps and then darting into the Tardis and bringing out weird gadgets and using the sonic to weld them with some scrap metal and wooden figurines some of the sailors had been carving, along with scraps of cloth from the passengers’ meager possessions. Sparks were flying and it was a good thing the ship was so wet really. The ship started to rock harder and water seeped in even more. No one was dry at all. Marco Polo and the Doctor were arguing about some points on the map and the captain was yelling at everyone and Rory simply went back to the Pandorica and waited. He paid attention in case he was needed, but that was where his true need was.

In about an hour’s time the Doctor had built what he called a gravity centralizer and they’d erected it on the ship’s deck and the ship immediately stopped feeling like it was going to shake apart. The rain and wind didn’t stop, but the ship felt more stable. The captain set his men to work on bailing out water and setting everyone to rights if possible.

It took another day after that for the storm to die down, but the Doctor never left the deck in all that time, monitoring the device and checking on the Tardis. 

“Thank you,” the captain said, when it was all over. “I think you’ve saved us. Somehow.”

“You’re quite welcome,” the Doctor replied. “I think we shall take our leave of you now. And Rory. The Tardis is quite cooled down now.”

“Will she be okay to fly?” Jo asked.

“As well as she ever did,” said the Doctor.

“So not really then,” Jo said cheekily.

“Be nice to the Tardis, my dear,” the Doctor admonished. “She’s older than I am.”

Rory and Marco Polo saw them into the Tardis and the Doctor waved goodbye.

“Please don’t remember any of this,” Rory called out.

“Not a moment,” the Doctor assured him. “Until next time.”

They waved and Jo jumped out of the Tardis to hug him and Marco Polo and then ran back in and the Doctor placed his hand on her shoulder as they closed the doors.

“Have you traveled with him?” Marco asked, turning back to Rory.

It seemed a little bit ridiculous to keep up the act.

“Not yet,” he replied.

Okay, maybe he could keep it up a little.

“Let’s get back down to that box of yours,” Marco said, clapping him on the back.

Rory was only too glad to go back below deck as a whispered conversation with the captain had halted any questions and he didn’t appear again to anybody but Marco until they docked.


	11. Seven

1397 AD

Rory breathed in the fresh air – though not really – and was glad to be back on British soil. It had definitely been a few centuries for him. But this was his home, his native land, and he really wished the Doctor hadn’t given him that book of poetry by Sir Walter Scott. But whatever words he used, Rory was heart glad to be back in Britain, even Yorkshire.

It was a good time to be alive with the Renaissance about to be a worldwide event and all that; still, the Hundred Year’s War was currently being fought all around him, and Rory was leading his own cult. Yes, he had followers. The Cult of the Centurion – somewhat akin to the star cults that had started rising up, which he thought were actually kind of wonderful - and he thought it was absolutely rubbish, but he didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. It was like in _Forrest Gump_ when everyone just started running alongside him. It was like that only Rory moved a lot slower and perhaps talked even less. It wasn’t like he could just shoot them all. That wouldn’t have solved anything.

But about thirty years before, a group of younger people had started following the Pandorica from place to place, leaving their homes, their families, and while he’d tried to stay mainly out of sight, they’d seen him when he’d had to defend the box and they knew he was there. They left him presents by the box and they had campfires at night where they sang songs about him and the box. Really, the only person Rory wanted to know about it was Jeff and see how the other man liked his chances then. As for Amy and the Doctor and his parents – both sets - and anyone else he’d ever known, he hoped they never ever found out. It was highly embarrassing.

The only good thing was that it somewhat protected the box. While he wouldn’t want any of those people’s lives on his conscience, Rory could tell they’d give their lives for the Pandorica, which was humbling and wrong and reassuring all at the same time. Rory tried not to learn their names. But there was Rioldo and Tristan and Frances and James and Isabella and others and he couldn’t help but overhear their hopes and dreams and plans and see who was falling for who and it was all so human and so wonderful and so isolating for him.

But they were back in England and he was attempting to keep the box out of sight of any military influences. He didn’t want anyone suddenly deciding the Pandorica was a prize of war. That had happened too often and was getting rather old. It had been relatively quiet so far and he was hoping to keep it that way so they could make an extended stay. He communicated his wishes through James who was sort of the middle man between him and the rest of the cult. Rory would rather that not be the case, but he had to make his wishes known about the box somehow and that was the only way he could think of without getting too involved. So he talked to James and James talked to everyone else and acted like a mother hen over them and Rory had to hope that it would be enough.

Rory stood on a hilltop looking at the sky. Just below him and to his right was the Pandorica with a few guards standing at each side. A campfire glowed a bit away from that and the rest of the group was laughing and singing. He kept his hand on his sword and his ears trained in the direction of the box and named all the stars, the ones he’d been to and the ones he hadn’t. Just because they weren’t there anymore didn’t mean that he didn’t think he could really see them if he tried. He wished they were there, not just because it would mean the universe was all right, but because of how beautiful they must have looked before man had discovered how to block out their brilliance with artificial light.

The next day Isabella wasn’t there anymore. Rory didn’t think too much of it, sometimes they wandered off, losing their faith/devotion or growing tired of the constant roughing it. It wasn’t unusual for new faces to suddenly show up when he did his patrols or for old ones to disappear. The generations came and went while Rory stayed the same.

Tristan was gone the next day. Sophia the next. Philippe the next. Rory knew he shouldn’t care and knew he should care and he felt a little bit of both. But no matter the degree, he was worried over these people who had put their faith in his mystery and summoned James to find out what was going on. The younger – he was going on at least fifty now - man appeared shaken and disturbed.

“O Centurion, I don’t know where they went. They didn’t say anything about leaving. They didn’t seem unhappy. I’ve failed them. I’ve failed you.”

Rory thought a couple of hard thoughts against the Doctor – yes, he’d made the choice to stay - for putting him in the position of manipulating these people for his own ends.

“It isn’t your fault,” he said, staying in the shadows. “I want you to look for them.”

“What about the Pandorica?” asked James.

“The Pandorica is my responsibility, not yours. Find your own and keep them safe.”

“But-“

“That is what you can do. Do it in daylight. Stay in pairs at least,” said Rory.

James nodded and left, Rory could see him issuing instructions to the others and extra torches being lit. Rory was left to his inner self-flagellation.

“Admirable, you handle that well,” came a voice out of the darkness.

Rory didn’t jump, he hadn’t in over five hundred years – Marco Polo didn’t count since he hadn’t actually moved - really, but he was startled.

He turned to face the figure.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Not you,” the voice said in rather accented English, “not box. I simply crave sustenance.”

“You’re taking these people?” Rory asked, his anger rising.

“These people, they leave, and I’m helping them,” the figure said and then melted back into the shadows.

Rory cursed and pulled his sword, standing even more vigilantly.

“He’s quite right, you know,” came another voice out of the dark. 

Rory turned around – wasn’t anyone at home in bed at night anymore? – and faced the new voice.

“About?” he asked.

“You’re rather good at getting people to do things because you need them to without them knowing why.”

“That might be the worst thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Rory said, using his night vision to look at the new intruder as he strolled into more visible lighting.

“My apologies then. I’ve always thought that a rather masterful thing myself,” said the man.

“Mastery isn’t always best,” said Rory warily.

“I do agree.” 

The man was leaning against a tree, holding an umbrella, with a hat, and his vest had…question marks on it. The voice had a bit of a brogue as well.

“You’re not from around here,” Rory said quietly.

“Nor are you. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the Doctor.”

Rory’s eyebrows shot up.

“The Doctor?”

“Yes, that’s me,” said the Doctor.

“What body are you?” asked Rory.

The other man looked somewhat surprised at that.

“I’m in my seventh body at the moment. Have we met before?”

“You could say that,” Rory said, studying him. Something about the man bothered him, making him think it wasn’t really the Doctor. “What are you doing here?”

“I see I must reveal all before you will,” the Doctor said, taking off his hat and bowing low. “I have heard tale of you and the mysterious Pandorica. I’m here to investigate. I’m sure you know how much I love doing that.”

“It does seem to be one of your favorite things to do,” Rory said and the feeling dissipated a little. “But I can see you don’t remember that you already know about the Pandorica.”

“Do I? How lovely for me. Now if only I could remember,” said the Doctor.

Rory clicked open his hand-gun – it wasn’t quite as impressive anymore with the widespread fad of handguns now, but no one would ever have a handgun quite like him - and kept it trained on the man.

“Let me see if I can’t help you remember. Rory.”

The Doctor paused for a moment as if remembering something – which, he probably was – and then smiled.

“Ah, Rory. I see I’m on rather a fool’s errand, aren’t I? How have you been?” he asked.

“Plastic, you?”

“Rather relieved I’m not wearing that lively coat anymore,” the Doctor confided.

Rory laughed and lowered his hand.

“It’s good to see you, Doctor, I am glad you’re here. I think you may have noticed I have a bit of a problem.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor said, looking at Rory’s hand with an expression of distaste. “I never took you for a cult leader,” the Doctor said, a bit disapprovingly.

“I never took myself for one and still don’t. But those kids…they don’t take no for an answer and I don’t think shooting them is exactly the way to go.”

“No, certainly not. But there are always ways and means around or through or over,” said the Doctor, his eyes twinkling.

“You’re rather tricky now,” Rory said.

The Doctor winked and put his hand to his hat.

“Now, now, I mustn’t give away my secrets. Though I gather you probably know a lot of them.”

“I do at that,” Rory said. “But I need your help, Doctor. I have to figure out what that was and why it wants my kids.”

“Have you and Amy ever discussed children?” asked the Doctor.

“Not really. She’s sort of in a box and I’m sort of plastic,” Rory said, rolling his eyes and feeling a bit frustrated at the man’s lack of urgency.

“Pity, I think you’d make a wonderful father.”

Rory couldn’t deny he felt a little bit of a glow of happiness at the thought, but it was quickly overshadowed by the knowledge that it could never happen now. He was pretty sure that’s not how more plastic people were made even if he had never really got the Nestene version of the birds and the bees chat.

“A little off the point there, Doctor,” he said. “I need to stop that thing.”

“It’s a Rezer,” the Doctor said calmly, twirling his umbrella. “I’ve met them before. They are carnivorous and nomadic and prey on similarly nomadic creatures. Your wandering band would make the perfect buffet. You can find them almost everywhere and every time due to their propensity for travel. Though I’ve seen considerably less of them around lately. Almost like they’re disappearing.”

The Doctor looked knowingly at Rory and Rory understood his meaning at once, but he couldn’t worry over there being less Rezers in the universe than there should be. He had people missing.

“How do we stop it?” Rory asked instead.

“I think…” the Doctor said, looking at his watch, a genuine pocket watch at that, “…ah, yes.”

An explosion lit up the night air and rocked the hill. The Doctor never wavered but Rory jumped in shock – the first time in five hundred years – and tried not to fall down. There were more hills to the southeast and they were on fire.

“What the hell was that?” he blurted out.

“I think your French is very good,” the Doctor noted before walking over and placing his hand on Rory’s arm. “That was Ace.”

“Ace?” repeated Rory.

“Ace. I sent her to follow the Rezer. She’s very good at that,” explained the Doctor.

“Ace?”

“Here, Professor,” came the voice of a young woman who, up till this point, Rory had called Sophia.

Rory opened his mouth in shock.

“You’ve been following me!” he told the Doctor.

“I told you, I didn’t know who you were. But I’m glad we were here to help anyway,” said the Doctor.

Rory swore again, this time deliberately in Latin.

“He’s got a mouth on him, ain’t he?” Ace said, taking off her outer clothes to reveal much more modern – for the eighties anyway - ones underneath. 

“Sorry,” Rory apologized somewhat automatically. “I don’t usually; I’m just a little surprised.”

“He’ll do that to you,” Ace said, pointing her thumb at the Doctor.

“Tell me about it,” Rory said and thought about how he was going to – if the universe didn’t fully die and he could manage it – arrange a meeting between all the companions of the Doctor he could find and have a grand tell all about the Doctor.

“It appears we can be on our way,” the Doctor said. “How fare the missing ones, Ace?”

“Tristan’s a goner, but Izzy and Phil are on their way back. James was gonna handle it from there.”

“Excellent work,” the Doctor said. “I see you favored a smaller explosion this time.”

“Smaller?” Rory asked, still watching the fire burn merrily.

“Ace could probably blow up the whole country at the moment,” the Doctor said and sighed. “Something I can’t seem to dissuade her from.”

“Yes, well, I’ve got things that can’t get blown up, so you’d better go,” Rory said, a little nervously.

“You look tired,” the Doctor said. “Would you like to come with us for a while? A short trip could do wonders for you.”

Rory stared at him.

“You can’t even ask me that, Doctor. I’m not leaving here.”

“Are you sure? I could have you back here before they even knew you were gone,” wheedled the Doctor.

“No offense, Doctor, but I don’t exactly trust your driving. And I wouldn’t leave her even for a second if I didn’t have to.”

“Good,” the Doctor said, sounding satisfied. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Rory thought this Doctor was just as exhausting as all the rest, for all his lack of manic energy and racing about.

“Get out of here,” he said, smiling ruefully. “And forget me.”

“See ya,” Ace said, waving goodbye. “Look after those ones for me.”

“I guess,” Rory said. “I guess I have to.”

“They’ll tire of it sooner rather than later, I imagine,” the Doctor said. “You’ll be alone again sooner than you’d wish.”

“I hope so,” Rory said, waving goodbye as the two walked back into dark.

He shook his head to clear it and then watched the fires burn down.


	12. Four Round Two

1501 AD

Rory inspected his shoulder as best he could. It was amazing that it had taken fourteen hundred years for him to get a serious injury, but he was thankful. He had chips and scrapes and his plastic armor really looked a fright - no way would he be accepted into a legion now - but now he had a huge gash in his shoulder. There wasn’t anything he could do about it and it didn’t…hurt, per say, but it was very odd feeling. Luckily, his cape would fit over the hole and no one would be able to tell. Part of his legend was in seeming indestructible so he tried to keep up the image as much as possible. 

He patched the hole with bandages - not that he was bleeding – and inspected his surroundings more thoroughly. They were back in Rome – why did he feel like he was home? – as he was avoiding Venice at all costs, and underground, though there was access for the rich and powerful to come and inspect the Pandorica. The Renaissance was getting into full swing and art was considered highly in vogue. The Pandorica was nothing if not intriguing. The current king was quite agog to keep the Pandorica’s location under wraps in case somebody wanted to steal it. Rory couldn’t agree more even if it meant he had to deal with the rich and idle waltzing in to look at the Pandorica whenever they wanted, considering it theirs to laud over. 

Granted, having Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo come and look at it had been a bit of a thrill. Rory had never been much into art, but you couldn’t have those two in front of you and not feel just a little bit awed. There were others, so many others, but those two would always go down in Rory’s top ten of historical figures he’d met if only because they were the only ones who didn’t seem to be interested in the Pandorica for its possibility of power or prestige or wealth. They loved it for its structure and form and beauty and meaning, just as Rory himself did.

There was security on hand for the Pandorica at the entrances to the chamber and that was the only way in. Rory had looked very thoroughly and made sure the chamber was structurally sound and that nothing looked out of the ordinary. It was all he could do really. But he liked where they were for the most part and hoped it would be of some duration. He was getting so close. After what he’d been through, five hundred years was nothing.

There were odd sounds sometimes, though. He’d learned to never ignore what his ears were telling him, but he had no idea what he was hearing or where it was coming from. It was the oddest ringing, not like a bell or like when his head got banged or something and he saw stars. He just knew somehow that it should be called ringing. He paid close attention to it for a few days, but it never changed. There was just a constant ringing. Nobody else seemed to notice it when they came into the chamber so Rory finally came to the conclusion that it was on a frequency only plastic could hear.

Then there was the temperature. Rory was under the impression that it should be rather cold underground at the level they were at. They weren’t very deep at all and the chamber and tunnels leading to it were very drafty. But at night especially he felt ridiculously warm, like he was in a sauna. It was really odd, but it was hard to confirm if he was the only one feeling it because he was generally the only person in the chamber at night. The other guards were stationed outside in the tunnels and probably wouldn’t notice, but he paid attention to their conversations just the same and heard nothing out of the ordinary.

He had decided that he would try and arrange a message to the king to see if they could somehow move the Pandorica. He wasn’t sure if it would happen or not, but he had to try, so that was what he did.

That night he was standing guard as usual when he suddenly felt dizzy, which hadn’t happened yet to plastic him. It was very disorienting. There was a sudden gust of wind and he felt his feet pulled out from under him and everything suddenly pressed in against him and when the pressure eased he didn’t know where he was. He most certainly was not with the Pandorica anymore. 

The panic that hit him at that point was absolutely terrifying. He’d always been rather prone to it – vampires in Venice, school exams, first day in his legion, asking Amy to marry him – and now he was completely and utterly taken over by sheer, unadulterated panic. At which point, he would have hyperventilated if he could breathe. He was wildly relieved no one was around to see him and laugh at poor Rory Williams, the nervous nurse or some other rubbish name like that, who had failed once again. Who couldn’t do anything right and who’d lost the most important person in his life. It was exactly as if the last fourteen hundred years had never happened. He’d never been plastic, never been multi-lingual, never been a crack shot, never defended and fought against armies and outsmarted emperors. Like he’d never traveled with the Doctor.

Rory started to feel - in the midst of his fear - that despite the resentment he’d felt against the Doctor, despite the horrible things he’d seen and done, the dangers Amy had been put into, that his life had been changed for the better having known the Doctor. He’d known that before. The instant Amy had told him about ending the Leadworth dream - so many many years before - he’d been content with their crazy, madcap life. But then he’d gotten killed and erased and turned into a plastic centurion and had been fighting for over a millennia. That sort of thing tended to change one’s perspective and he hadn’t even realized how much resentment had been crowding back into his opinion of his Doctor. Not the many amazing men – all one man – that he’d met since then, just his Doctor.

The Doctor had helped bring out something that Rory somehow knew he had possessed all along and had shown even when it vexed the Doctor. He had courage and he had faith and he had patience and loyalty and strength and smarts and he used them in the service of the people he loved, even when they didn’t deserve it or tried to push it away. He’d never been appreciated, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t who he was, a human being – currently plastic – who was very, very good.

Rory calmed down. He closed his eyes and counted to ten and when he opened them again, he still wasn’t where he thought he should be currently located, but he could focus and deal with the situation. He was in a white room and there were absolutely no distinguishing features that he could see anywhere. There was just endless white. It was the bleakest thing he’d ever seen. He started to walk.

As he went, he kept his gun hand cocked and ready to go. He was cautious, but he couldn’t hear – even with his ears – anything. There was nothing but the white. He went along this way for at least twenty minutes before he came to anything. It was a door, a simple door. He looked around again for any other signs, but there was just the door. It was white, too, but he could make out the handle and slowly reached forward and opened it. When he stepped through it shut behind him with a bang and when he turned back around, it was gone.

There was that pulling sensation again and he squeezed his eyes shut almost on reflex and when he opened them again he was on the Tardis. It was his Tardis, the one he’d first seen, and he almost wanted to sag with relief. There was his Doctor and his Amy, leaning chummily together on the console floor above him. They were laughing animatedly and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. But it wasn’t possible – anything was possible, he knew that – because he knew what was really happening. His Amy wasn’t there and his Doctor was somewhere else and his Tardis was…he couldn’t remember what had happened to the Tardis, just something about an explosion. But this felt like he’d just fallen asleep and the Pandorica and the Alliance and his being a Roman had never happened.

He tried to open his hand gun and it didn’t work. He reached for his sword and it wasn’t there. He was dressed like Rory and he was starving. He tried to hear what they were saying and he couldn’t. It was the weirdest thing that he’d encountered yet. Weirder than the dreams they’d all shared, weirder than the singing Gilleve planet, weirder than meeting multiple Popes, weirder than being plastic. He opened his mouth to call out to the Doctor and Amy and tell them about his fifteen hundred year dream when Amy reached out and kissed the Doctor.

Rory froze and shook his head. This wasn’t real, this wasn’t true, this wasn’t what was happening. He’d rather be plastic. The Doctor didn’t look like he was returning it; in fact, he rather looked like he was trying to get away. That was the Doctor for you, but this was Amy and she was doing…that. They were engaged and now she was doing that. Rory had been waiting for her for so many years – for penance, he reminded himself – at least, he thought he had, and now, there she was, snogging the Doctor in front of him. He was angry and he felt broken and he wanted to do anything but be here. It was like growing up all over again with that painful, exquisite knowledge of loving Amy and knowing he would never be enough for her.

But he was, wasn’t he? She’d chosen him, back in that dream, and she’d remembered him even when the universe had erased him from existence. The Doctor would never let her get away with something like this and even if she wanted to…do that, she’d never do it in front of Rory. She was tactless, but she wasn’t thoughtless. This was absolutely not real; this was not the reality of life. The universe may have changed, but it could not change this much. Rory wouldn’t allow it to.

Laughing a little hysterically at that absurd thought, he ran up the console ramp and grabbed Amy away from a rather relieved looking Doctor and kissed her very properly. It took a second or two, but then she was kissing him back, her lips open and meshing with his perfectly. Her arms entwined around his neck and he brought one hand up to grasp her neck and the other went around her waist, just feeling the bare skin under her shirt and-

“I say, am I interrupting something?”

Rory felt that tugging and pressure and the lovely and far more interesting pressure of Amy’s body and lips was torn away from him. He blinked and standing in front of him in that same white space was the Doctor. The one with the scarf.

“Doctor?” he asked, and looked down and saw his sword.

“You did look rather entranced. I’m sorry to pull you away. But the illusion is never better than the reality,” said the Doctor.

The Doctor thumped Rory on the back and Rory felt it, but not the same way he would have when he was human. It felt – almost – good to be plastic again. 

“I take it I’m somewhere I’m not supposed to be?” Rory asked ruefully.

“I should say so. You’ve been traveling. I would offer you a jelly baby, but it wouldn’t be a real one, and, anyway, you don’t eat.”

“Why wouldn’t it be real?” asked Rory.

“We’re not here,” the Doctor said, “well, not physically. Our mental selves are here, and one could argue that the mental is the real person. I would, though, perhaps not on Sundays.”

“Where are our mental selves?” Rory asked.

“We’ve, rather, you’ve, gone Regret Traveling,” replied the Doctor.

“Do I want to know what that is?”

“I don’t see why not. Knowledge is good for you.” The Doctor turned and started to walk away, scarf trailing after him. “Come on, let’s get out. Anyway…it can be mistaken for time traveling, but it’s not. Your body stays where you are, but your mind revisits the past. Not the literal past as I’m sure you saw, but the mental past. All very exhausting, of course.”

Rory hurried to catch up.

“So those were my mental regrets?”

“Yes, astute Rory, but you had to conquer them, which, I have to say, I’m very impressed you did without knowing anything about where you were.”

“I had a good teacher,” Rory said, feeling led to make the compliment.

“The best in the universe!” the Doctor said, smiling broadly. “And this was a gift. Sometimes considered the best and worst gift in the universe. From the Taliki Cr’ofv. They’re empathic and telepathic and dimensionally suited for this kind of thing. Though they’re usually supposed to ask, I might just report this to the Shadow Proclamation. Wait, I forgot, that’s gone now.”

“I’d rather you didn’t anyway,” Rory said, “I-I feel better. I…think it was good.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Nothing like a good regret cleansing,” said the Doctor cheerfully.

“How did you find me?”

“I’m telepathic, too, you know,” the Doctor said, sounding impatient. “I came to visit you and then you were in that state.”

“Why do you visit me?” Rory asked, since the subject had come up. “You never visit anyone else. I know.”

“I’d rather not know that,” the Doctor said, looking a bit uneasy. “And you might, well, you might need it more than anyone else. It’s an extraordinary thing you’re doing and you might just need…well, me, and company.”

“You’re blushing, Doctor,” Rory said, smirking, but feeling like blushing himself.

“What nonsense,” the Doctor said, glaring at him.

“How come you remember me?” Rory asked pointedly, giving him an out.

“It wasn’t my fault!” the Doctor declared. “I was at a concert, I’ve always enjoyed Rory Gallagher’s work and you can guess what happened from there.”

“I suppose it’s pointless to ask why you didn’t just erase your memory again once it had been accidentally un-erased?”

“I didn’t think of that,” the Doctor said. “But how could I enjoy the concert?”

“After the concert?” Rory pointed out.

“Then we wouldn’t be able to hash it over,” the Doctor said. “But still, I’ll tell Romana that a silly Auton could come up with something she couldn’t. That will fix her.”

“Romana, traveling with you, I suppose?”

“Not the other way around, no matter what she says,” the Doctor said. “Just because she got first in flight class.”

“I’m very confused,” Rory said as they came to an exit sign. 

An honest to goodness exit sign.

“Romana’s Gallifreyan, we were at school together. She’s a pompous one, stay away from her.”

“Racial trait?” Rory mumbled, but followed the Doctor out, trying to imagine the Doctor in school and failing utterly.

He felt that same wind and dizziness and then found that he was standing in front of the Pandorica with his sword drawn, facing a small blonde woman who was staring at him curiously.

“You’re Rory?” she asked calmly.

“In the plastic,” he said, lowering his sword. “Sorry, was I about to skewer you?”

“Your body memory is very good,” she said. “You wouldn’t let anyone near the box, even with your mind gone. That’s a good sign.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Rory said, feeling odd talking to another Gallifreyan - Timelady…? – since he knew they were all dead.

“Romana, don’t bluster,” the Doctor said, coming up next to them. “We have to go, there’s a meteor shower in the Gastar nebula! At least, there might be if it isn’t gone.”

“We can’t miss it if it’s there,” Romana said, and spouted off some sort of reason that involved inter-steller travel laws, comet theories, and once-in-a-current-regeneration opportunities. 

Rory was mind-boggled and he stared openly at her. A female Doctor-like person. How…weird.

“It’s a pity you can’t come with us,” the Doctor said wistfully. “I could tell everyone I traveled with Romana and the Roman.”

“I’m sure you could pick up another Roman somewhere,” Rory said.

“I want _the_ Roman, Rory.”

Rory felt flushed and quickly changed the subject.

“Doctor, can we set it so that only I can trigger your memory?”

“No,” said the Doctor.

“Yes,” said Romana.

The Doctor glared at her.

“Fine, yes. I’ll do it.” He pulled his sonic out of his pocket and held it up to Rory’s face. “Say Rory.”

“Rory,” Rory said, feeling foolish.

“That does that,” the Doctor said and flounced over to where the Tardis was. “I’ve sent a message to the head of the Taliki and they won’t send you back anymore, Rory. Try not to set up a nest in any of their caverns though. I don’t think it will be a problem, they seem to be the only ones left.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Rory said.

Romana said something to him in a musical sounding language that he’d never heard before. He stared at her. He could tell it must be Gallifreyan, but he didn’t understand why the Tardis didn’t translate it.

She smiled at him and they disappeared into the box.

Rory put away his sword and patted the Pandorica to make sure it was really there.

“I feel like I’ve just had thirty years’ worth of counseling in ten minutes,” he whispered, trying to clear his head.

Then the day’s first visitor entered the chamber and it was back to business as normal.


	13. Ten

1772 AD 

“I don’t understand,” Rory yelled at the spiny looking alien in front of him. “I can’t understand you.”

Which was rather pointless since it was obvious the spiny alien didn’t understand him either, which actually answered one of Rory’s questions about the Tardis translation circuits. The Tardis must need to be present the first time someone met an alien race in order to be able to do the translating magic which would explain why the Doctor had given him language books. Maybe. Or maybe the Tardis had gone out of existence entirely. Whatever the reason, it really was not going to help Rory out of his current predicament.

He’d had a crazy couple of hundred years. He and the Pandorica had been shunted through deepest Africa, taken over the Pacific into Australia of all places when some genius scholar had gotten the idea that the Pandorica was a prison – just because he was right, Rory had to laugh - so they could figure out how to use it in their penal colony there. When they’d arrived, the people they were supposed to be sent to had apparently never existed and so Rory had tried to figure out how to get the Pandorica back to England. The best he’d been able to come up with was the Americas. There had been a hairy decade or so in South America before they’d made their way into North America and taken up residence in a cave near the Canadian border.

There was fighting all along there and Rory figured it would be a great place to disappear. It had been for a good long while. He’d barely seen anyone apart from the occasional moose – he’s not kidding, it seriously happened – that came dropping in, and had happily predicted being undiscovered until well into the next century when he’d hopefully get back to England. His prediction was half right. He wasn’t discovered by humans, but by aliens. Who shouldn’t exist, he thought petulantly. They were currently not in the cave any longer, but the alien spaceship that was parked in the cave.

Rory had been trying to communicate with their leader – he assumed it was their leader anyway – for hours, and was getting nowhere. Sign language was not universal when the physiology was so different. They’d taken his sword away, but hadn’t been able to get at his hands. Considering they all had big, alien ray gun things, he’d decided he was at a bit of a disadvantage if it came to a fire fight.

The aliens didn’t really seem hostile, or Rory gathered they would probably have killed him a long time ago, but they seemed scared and defensive. That was the best he could guess. Eventually they’d thrown him in a cell of some kind and he’d spent the better part of an hour worrying about the Pandorica and trying to figure out if he could somehow break out of his cell. He also wondered for the billionth time why the Pandorica couldn’t somehow be a very small box that he could perhaps keep in his pocket and make big again when the nineties – the right nineties, he’d seen a lot of them - rolled around.

He’d been there for a few hours when there was a big commotion outside of his cell and Rory saw a skinny man in a pinstripe suit and a dark-skinned woman with a pleather – what a flashback/flashforward that was - jacket being shoved along the corridor. The aliens did some more squawky noises and put them in Rory’s cell with him.

“How long have you been in here?” the man asked, eying Rory with interest. “I can only think of two reasons for you to be dressed like that. Fancy dress or time works very differently with the Heenuis. If the fancy dress option, bravo for getting it so accurate and for getting the materials despite them not existing anymore.”

Rory could feel a non-existent headache coming on. He hoped his guess would be accurate, but really how could it not be?

“Doctor?” he asked, keeping his eyes closed.

“No talking, no plotting. Different cells, no, not available,” he heard from outside the cell and that only helped to confirm his previous suspicion. “Be quiet, straw people.” 

He could understand the aliens now.

“Hello,” the Doctor said, completely disregarding the alien’s instructions and, also, poking him. “Are your eyes naturally closed all the time or are you suffering from some kind of temporary stickiness?”

“Doctor, stop badgering him,” the woman said, and Rory could hear her voice getting closer and a cautious hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right? Don’t mind him, he’s a bit mad.”

“Bad form, Martha Jones,” the Doctor cried out. “Have I ever called you mad?”

“Am I mad?” she asked calmly.

Rory opened one eye.

“Don’t be silly, you’re far too sensible for that. And rational. All those serious things. Bothersome things,” said the Doctor.

“Would you say you’re mad?” Martha continued on the same track.

“Not usually, only occasionally, and when in Rome, which we’re not and I’m blaming him for that reference, so no, but then again, it is Saturday. Fine, yes,” answered the Doctor.

“Then I’m not being rude,” said Martha.

Rory opened his other eye and started to laugh.

“Doctor, I’m glad to see you.”

“Why, are you ill? You look a bit…plastic,” said the Doctor curiously.

“Only for about the last sixteen hundred years or so,” answered Rory.

He kept laughing. Martha and the Doctor exchanged a look and Rory didn’t mind if they thought he was nuts. He deserved to act a little nuts, he thought.

“Can you tell me your name?” Martha asked.

“If I did it would take all the mystery out of life,” Rory said. “Doctor, is the Tardis nearby, do you have your sonic? I’ve got to get out of here and these aliens and I have been doing charades for the past couple of hours. Do you know what they want? Are they invading?”

The Doctor and Martha exchanged another look.

“They’ve got the Tardis,” Martha said slowly.

“They took the sonic,” the Doctor said. “And have we met? Are you one of the people who don’t exist anymore? Ooh, how do I know that?” he asked, twirling around and sticking his hands in his pockets. “And why do you know me? I think you do anyway. Seems like you do.”

“You’re either in your first, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth body,” Rory said, enjoying teasing the Doctor a bit. “But whatever one, it’s a talker.”

“Constantly,” Martha said, standing up closer to the Doctor.

“I like this one,” Rory said and stood up himself. “Both companion and Doctor. And I will end the suspense. Doctor, my name is Rory Williams. We’re going to travel, you and I. Hopefully…keep the universe from dying.”

“Oh, oh, clever you,” the Doctor said, smiling. “Rude you. Didn’t have to keep me in suspense like that. Now I understand. It’s rather like getting a hat with a hole in it and then fixing it. You’re like a hatter. Martha Jones, allow me to present Rory Williams, faithful Centurion. I had to forget him, you see.”

“A pleasure,” Martha said, sticking her hand out.

Rory shook it. 

“Here, too. Sorry to be so batty. I’ve been on my own for awhile now and it gets a bit…rough.”

“I’ll say,” the Doctor said, rubbing his hands together. “Now, now, Rory and Martha, how shall we do this? I assume the Pandorica is on board?”

“Yeah, forward,” said Rory.

“The Tardis is at the back,” Martha said.

The Doctor suddenly whirled around and shouted for the guards to come back. When they did, the Doctor whispered in their ears – where Rory assumed their ears were – and they unlocked the door. Rory could only guess the Doctor had somehow said whatever he said so that Rory couldn’t understand, because normally he could hear a whispered conversation at fifteen meters. When Rory and Martha tried to follow the Doctor out, the aliens hissed at them and slammed the door in their faces.

“Doctor?” they asked in unison.

“I’ll be back,” he said, winking at them. “No fear.”

He strolled off with the alien guards and the other two settled back into the cell.

“I hate it when he does that,” Martha said, sitting down against the cell wall.

“Tell me about it,” Rory agreed with her and followed suit.

“So, have you traveled with the Doctor before?” Martha asked.

“It depends on what life I’m living,” Rory said. “I’m not sure I even understand it really.”

“Sounds like a good story for while we wait,” Martha said.

So Rory told her. Companions of the Doctor were always the best people to tell strange stories about time travel to. It was sort of how they lived their lives. 

“So any of us could be subject to just disappearing and never existing?” Martha asked at the end.

“Yeah, the only reason you’d know about it maybe would be cause of the Doctor and the Tardis. The Doctor said we were at the eye of the storm – him and me in particular and the Earth as well, I think - but there’s no reason why we can’t suddenly get erased. I’ve already been actually and it’s not much fun.”

“I believe you,” Martha said. “I think your time in the Tardis has been even more exciting than mine and I met Shakespeare and almost got killed by witches.”

“Will’s the best,” Rory agreed absentmindedly. “Anyway, I’ve just got to get out of here and find Amy.”

“Don’t blush,” Martha said, “but I think that’s amazing. You know how many blokes would wait that long for a girl?”

“I did kill her,” Rory said. “Kinda feels like I owe her.”

“Don’t be silly,” Martha said, nudging him. “I mean, yes, you did and you do, but most guys would simply buy flowers and put them on her grave and then party until the universe died.”

“Not much around to party about,” Rory said glumly.

“I get the feeling you don’t think much of yourself,” Martha said.

“Oh, I’m great,” Rory said, looking at her. “Just not to the right people. But it’s hard to tell, I change all the time and it’s a bit difficult to keep up. I’ve met so many Doctors.”

“Right, regeneration,” Martha said. “That’s a bit weird, eh?”

“Who changes their face like that?” Rory asked.

“Only aliens with more brains than sense and a weird penchant for licking everything,” Martha answered.

Rory made a face.

“He licks things?”

“All the time. It’s almost worse when he’s in the Tardis,” said Martha.

“I didn’t need to know that,” Rory said, feeling more relaxed than he had in about a thousand years.

“I’m sorry, I just couldn’t keep carrying that on my own,” Martha said, laughing. “But he’s a bit brilliant as well. I’m very glad to be traveling with him. Even if he does keep on about how he’s traveled with better.”

“He’s traveled with the best,” Rory said, “I’ve seen them. That definitely includes you, Miss Martha Jones. Oh…I’m sounding like him now, aren’t I?”

“Slightly,” Martha said. “But that’s okay. It’s not bad to be like the Doctor, not mostly. And thank you. Also, it’s Dr. Martha Jones.”

“Me, too,” Rory said. “Well, the medieval version of a medical license anyway. I doubt it would hold up in 2010, but I was a nurse then – in 2010, not in the middle ages, well, I was then, too, I guess…technically - so I’m definitely licensed at least a little.”

“Yeah?” Martha asked, laughing at his pathetic explanation.

“Yeah. But I wasn’t going to try for doctor. See, the Doctor visited Amy when she was small and then disappeared for twelve years, and the rest of us thought he was just her imaginary friend. She always wanted to play Raggedy Doctor when we were younger. Kinda put me off of the whole doctor thing. It reminded me of being…second. But I’d always wanted to help people…”

“So you did what you could,” Martha said. “I tell you what, it’s annoying to feel like you’re second best. But you never really are. I’ve decided that. After all, the Doctor wouldn’t even bother with you if he didn’t think you were good. Even just a little bit. No matter how many Rose Tylers were traveling with him beforehand.”

“Rose?” Rory asked. “She traveled with the Ninth Doctor.”

“Then I must be with the Tenth,” Martha said.

“Then I’ve got Eleven, Twelve or Thirteen. Wow, I could have the very last Doctor,” said Rory.

“That’s a terrifying thought,” Martha said.

“I highly agree.”

They sat in silence for awhile before they started talking again and plotting how they would get out of the cell and what they were going to do to the Doctor for leaving them in there for so long, but it was a full two days before the Doctor came back and by that time, they were very fast friends. Rory hadn’t had real friends for a while now and it had been very hard to get close to any of the Doctor’s companions that he’d met because he’d known them for such short periods. Martha’s presence was helping to stave off the panic that being away from the Pandorica inevitably brought on. He really hoped nothing bad had – now he was thinking about the person currently sitting next to him in the past tense, oh bother - happened to Martha to cause her to stop traveling with the Doctor.

On the second day, there was a scuffling sound from down the hall and the Doctor was thrown onto the floor outside their cell.

“Doctor, what’s going on?” Martha shouted.

“Are you hurt?” Rory asked.

“There’s no need to worry about the Doctor,” the Doctor said, getting to his feet. “Just the ceremonial tossing to celebrate a new friendship.” They looked blankly at him. “Oh, didn’t I say? I convinced them to leave. We’re going to take them somewhere else.”

“Where? The universe is dead,” Rory pointed out.

“Yes, well, yes, didn’t really…still, doesn’t matter. I can corridor off a section of the Tardis for them and it shouldn’t be long now - then - until you right things, Rory. You and me.”

The aliens unlocked the doors and Rory and Martha stretched their limbs.

“How are they even here?” Rory asked. “I live in a version of history where there are no stars and Genghis Khan never existed. How did these ones survive?”

“Vacation,” the Doctor said, pulling his seemingly newly returned sonic – the same one as the Ninth Doctor had possessed – and giving it a look over. “They were on Venus when – when being a very relative term since it’s always happening - it all happened. It took them sixteen hundred years to get here and they thought they’d make a go at life on Earth. That would, of course, equal the utter destruction of the human race since the Heenuis are very carnivorous, but just sweet as can be underneath. So, I explained what was going on and they’ve agreed to come with me. They’ll get a new home and I’ll get a lot of company, a lot of company. I hope the Tardis won’t mind…” the Doctor trailed off.

Rory stifled a smile at the mental conversation the Doctor and the Tardis would have once she – she was always a she now to him – realized she would be hosting an entire species for an indefinite period of time until the universe died.

“Blimey, won’t the wife be mad,” Martha said, apparently thinking the same thing.

“Mouths closed and come on,” the Doctor said, taking off his glasses and putting them in his pocket, and then offered her his hand.

“Sorry, Doctor,” Martha said, taking his hand and walking off down the corridor with him. “Coming, Rory?”

“I’ve got to find Amy,” said Rory.

“She’s this way,” the Doctor said, cocking his head. “We’ll go together a ways yet, Centurion.”

“I think I like Rory the Roman better,” Rory mumbled to himself.

“We can do that, too,” the Doctor said. “You’ve earned titles upon titles, slews of them, piles and heaps and bounds. You can have any title you like.”

“Rory Williams from Leadworth will do,” Rory said.

“That’s the spirit,” the Doctor said. “Now, allons-y, Rory Williams from Leadworth.”

“Why didn’t that translate?” Rory asked.

“You’re asking the most advanced telepathic brain that speaks everything why it can make sure you hear it in any language it wants?” asked the Doctor in a slightly offended tone.

“Yeah, I am,” said Rory.

“Special friendship…link, brainy…thing.”

“That cleared that up then,” Rory said.

“You two behave,” Martha said, linking her arm with Rory’s.

They soon came to the main chamber and Rory saw the Pandorica unopened and undamaged in the center. He wanted to rush over to it in relief, but he didn’t. Symbols don’t rush.

“I’ve arranged for a teleport,” the Doctor said, gesturing. 

“Goodbye then,” Rory said. “I’m getting closer to you, I think. My you, I mean.”

“Sounds like,” the Doctor said. “Only three more after me. Goodbye, goodbye, brave Rory.”

“Don’t remember this,” Rory said. 

“I won’t. Martha here won’t let me, will you?” said the Doctor.

“As if I can ever make you do anything,” Martha said.

“Can, too,” the Doctor argued. “Centrica Five? The moon? 1969?”

“Goodbye, Martha,” Rory said, pulling her into a hug and surprising himself with his own boldness. “Thanks for everything. I mean it.”

“You, too,” Martha said. “Never give up, okay? You’re so close. I’ll see you in another universe or something.”

“You’re on. Drinks on me,” said Rory.

“Bring Amy,” she replied. “I’d like to meet a girl worth waiting two thousand years for.”

“Okay,” said Rory, hoping against hope it would be so.

The Doctor hugged him, too and then Rory stepped on the platform, putting one hand on the Pandorica, so glad to feel its familiar surface again. The Doctor and Martha blurred and were gone.


	14. Ten Round Two

1896 AD

Sometimes Rory wondered exactly how on Earth he managed to get into these kinds of things. He didn’t wonder long because he was usually running a lot or fighting for his life or plotting how to keep Amy safe or reining in another one of the Doctor’s crazy schemes or trying to heal someone with limited tools.

Or simply living through history. Like escaping the American Revolutionary War with only minutes to spare and then getting caught up in the French Revolution, meeting Beethoven, avoiding Napoleon’s armies, trying to understand why Lord Nelson never existed, listening to Wagner on opening night, hearing the news from across the pond about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination – not by Booth though, he’d never been born – getting bought – well, it was the Pandorica really – by Queen Victoria, watching them try to x-ray the Pandorica with no results, and then getting presented to the first Olympic games as a peace offering. Though he remembered being present at the actual first Olympics and that was a very weird thought.

That’s where he currently was, Athens, Greece – he liked using his Greek again - and if he’d a. been more into sports or b. less worried about so many people around the Pandorica, he’d have been thrilled to be there. The best part though, was so many people dressed up in so many different costumes, their native dress as well as different periods. It was like a science-fiction convention for history cosplay and he was practically the main event as he blended in perfectly. It was almost easy to keep an eye on the Pandorica because he’d gotten hired as part of the security forces for it. 

As times got more modern he had a feeling he’d have to do that more instead of appearing and demanding things based on being a legend. That hadn’t worked very well on Queen Victoria anyway. He’d been trying to figure out how to get fake papers or something when that became necessary. Maybe the Doctor could fake some for him or something. Or Rory could get involved with a seedy underground sort of person like in the films. The idea actually was frightening and exciting at the same time.

But he wouldn’t have to worry about that for quite some time so he put it in the back of his mind and spent his time watching the Olympics. The Pandorica was in a high box-type place of Panathenaic Stadium overlooking everything, so he had an excellent view. It was beyond amazing and he only wished Amy and the Doctor were there to enjoy it with him. It was funny to him that he would wish for his Doctor – not that he would want Amy, which went without saying – but that, despite how many Doctors Rory met, he wanted his original Doctor, too. He wondered if that happened to all companions who met more than one Doctor.

It was the third day of the games and, so far, everything had been quiet and any excitement was relegated to the arenas. Night had fallen and most of the athletes were resting in the areas designated for them and the visiting dignitaries from each country were meeting in the main area, hobnobbing and schmoozing. Rory was the only guard who stayed at his post through night and day – some of the other guards found that odd, but none minded if it meant that they never had to work the night shift – and so he saw a lot of what went on behind the scenes in the privileged areas. He’d even become somewhat of a favorite for several of the older women who thought he was adorable in his costume and devotion. Whatever kept him close to the box was Rory’s mantra these days.

Rory had a habit – formed about fifteen hundred years prior – of always standing in the shadows so that he could watch for threats without being noticed. It had served him well on too many occasions to count. So far that evening, nothing untoward or threat-y had happened, but then two foreign officials, the ambassadors from Bulgaria and China, if he wasn’t mistaken, walked past and paused in front of the box, looking rather furtively around them. Rory perked up his ears.

“It must be tonight,” the one was saying. “In the spirit of the festivities, most are unguarded. As each category gains a clear winner, everyone shall be on the watch and less likely to make merry until the end.”

Rory’s Bulgarian was very weak; however, he had once visited New Bulgaria with the Doctor and Amy and, though the language had definitely evolved – slang was all pervasive he’d discovered – since now, the Tardis translation seemed to still be working well enough for him to understand what was happening.

“Agreed,” said the Chinese ambassador. His Bulgarian was probably better than Rory’s though that wouldn’t be hard. “But we must be cautious. There have been far too many rumors about an attempt. If we assassinate, we must assassinate well.”

Rory’s eyebrows went well into his hairline.

“Is the target aware?” asked Bulgaria.

“Certainly suspicious, but we have one amongst their number. Chengming will not fail us,” assured China.

“I have heard great praise of her previous work. But I fear to be involved. We must not be found out,” said Bulgaria.

“You are involved,” his cohort snapped back. “We have too many strings tying us together so don’t get any ideas about pleading innocence. We are committed to this now.”

“I don’t want to know the details,” insisted Bulgaria.

“You are the details,” said China.

“Fine,” the Bulgarian ambassador said and sighed. “We are going to meet here, yes?”

“In three hours time. Chengming will come to get her final instructions and the first half of her pay. You will provide the money, so do not be late.”

“And then the English will die?” said Bulgaria eagerly.

“Yes!”

The two figures melted away into the darkness and Rory almost sat down while he tried to figure out what he’d just heard.

An assassination attempt on an English person of importance in three hours by some Chinese girl named Chengming. What should he do? As far as his history served, there hadn’t been any assassinations at the first Olympic games. On the other hand, history really couldn’t be trusted right now. And even if it could, should any person be carelessly allowed to die when it could be prevented? Rory would say no immediately every time if he hadn’t been acquainted with the Doctor for so long. Sometimes things had to happen – something called fixed points - or there would be consequences, but one apparently had to be a Timelord or something to know what those might be.

But Rory wasn’t a Timelord and the Doctor wasn’t there and Rory was, so he was going to do something about it. It was about nine o’clock and he didn’t want to leave the Pandorica unguarded. However, one of his fellow guards, Sven, took his job almost as seriously as Rory did and usually showed up at about now to partake in the watch. Rory prayed tonight wouldn’t be the night that Sven found some buxom girl in the buffet line or whatever the equivalent here was. Rory didn’t know, he didn’t eat.

Rory waited for about thirty minutes anxiously, trying to figure out what to do, when Sven showed up.

“Sven!” he called out, nearly delirious with joy. “I need you to watch for me.”

Sven blinked, not seeming to understand. Rory could get that, after all, he never went anywhere. Ever.

“Yes,” Sven said, “I will watch for you. When will you be back?”

“As soon as I can,” Rory said, “but probably not for a couple of hours. Try not to let anyone see you and please don’t let anyone near the box.”

“That is the point,” Sven said, rather grumpily, Rory thought. 

Rory simply left and headed toward the English portion of the vast city of tents for different countries. No proper Olympic Village this, everyone had to fend for themselves. Tents and flags were everywhere. It was a veritable maze and would be very easy to escape through in the midst of some type of confusion. Rory planned how he could either a. prevent that or b. cause that, while he made his way through. He was known to most of the important people and so most everyone he passed greeted him. He nodded in return and kept going.

It took him a good twenty minutes to get to the tent that he was pretty sure would be the target. Nearly next in line for the English throne would certainly do it. He crept around the back of the tent, avoiding their guards with ease. There were slots of space between the canvas and he peered through, spying a dizzying assortment of food and people. He kept moving until he found who he was looking for. There were plenty of girls around, several of them Chinese.

“I didn’t know Romans were peeping toms,” a familiar voice from behind him said.

Rory nearly sagged with relief.

“Doctor!” he said quietly.

“John Smith actually, though if you do call me Doctor I inevitably answer, sort of a Pavlovian response, I think. And you don’t know him cause he’s not been born yet, but apparently he wasn’t born at all so maybe it’s a totally different response you would call it.”

Rory watched the Tenth Doctor natter on and grinned.

“Doctor, I’ve never been so glad to see someone since the last time I was never so glad to see someone, which, incidentally, was also you.”

“I’m very popular this time period,” the Doctor said happily. “I’m not usually popular, usually locked up or turned into a god or shot at. Very rude, of course. I rather like being popular.”

“My name is Rory,” Rory said patiently and watched the usual flicker of comprehension pass over the Doctor’s face.

“What trouble have you got for me this time?” the Doctor asked, smiling slowly. 

“An assassination attempt,” replied Rory.

“By Chengming, that’s what this little one told me,” the Doctor said, pointing to his empty hand. Rory just looked at it. The Doctor looked down. “Oh, she’s run off. Well, I don’t blame her, after all, who would want to be involved in this? Apart from you and me. Daft, we are.”

“Or simply bored after hanging around for a couple of millennia,” Rory said.

“Bored, not you,” the Doctor said. “Think of it all, Rory. Think of the Romans and the Vandals and the Popes and the armies and the Muslims and the Crusades and the French, always the French, the ships and dances and inventions and people, people, people. It’s enough to make anyone mad, mad and happy.”

“Certainly has done you,” Rory said, smiling faintly. “From knowing multiple worlds even if they don’t exist anymore. Rather like your informant, I think,” he finished, pointing at the ground where two sets of footprints, one considerably smaller than the other, could be seen coming up but none going away.

“Oh, that’s sad,” the Doctor said. “I liked her. She wasn’t afraid of the Tardis.”

“Sorry about that,” Rory said, “but Chengming is due back at the Pandorica in less than two hours to get her money and instructions. We’ve got to act now.”

“Right,” the Doctor said and clapped his hands together. He pushed open the tent flaps – never minding that they weren’t supposed to be opened - tearing them, and strode into the midst of a bunch of ladies - thankfully - mostly dressed. “Nobody panic but someone’s going to get killed.”

Rory almost clapped his hand on his forehead in a cliché display of annoyance, really, he almost did.

Panic erupted and Rory grabbed the Doctor and pulled him back out and found himself holding the Doctor’s hand while running – that was strictly Amy’s job, not his, they’d tossed for it and he’d won for once in his life – and dropped it. The Doctor laughed at him and kept going. They made their way to a place far enough where they couldn’t possibly be considered to have been involved and stopped.

“Are you mad?” Rory asked. “Now we’ll never get back in there.”

“But they’ll be doubly on the alert now,” the Doctor said. “They – meaning the assassins - would have to be fools to try anything which Chengming will undoubtedly tell her accomplices back at the Pandorica.”

He smiled his very smug smile and made a triumphant clicking kind of noise with his mouth. Rory shook his head.

“You are going to be the death of me,” he said, sighing.

“Again?” queried the Doctor.

“Again. Could you ever explain your plans before you implement them perhaps?” asked Rory.

“You take all the fun out of life,” the Doctor said, then became more serious. “But nobody’s dying here tonight. Not on my watch. Never on my watch.”

Rory felt a little bit worried. This Doctor had been through the Time War, but he seemed to suffer from PTSD more than Nine had. And he appeared to be alone.

“Where’s Martha?” he asked. “Did something happen to her, Doctor? Tell me!”

The Doctor stared at him for a moment before breaking out into a grin. 

“Not my Martha. Strongest woman in the cosmos, defender of the Earth! No, she left me, had to. She’s gone and gotten married actually and done something dreadful to her hair. But she’s fine. She was lucky, she was smart, always been brilliant, my Martha,” he finished, seeming a million years away.

Rory wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or alarmed. 

“And you’re on your own now?” he asked cautiously.

“I’m not on my own,” the Doctor said, ruffling his hair. “I’ve got Rory the Roman with me! Always somebody new and interesting.”

“But nobody full time?” Rory persisting, hardly knowing why he was doing so.

“It’s dangerous being with me,” the Doctor said tightly. “You’re evidence enough of that.”

“But I am going to travel with you…provided we don’t all get erased,” Rory said. “You won’t always feel that way.”

“I can’t know too much about my future,” the Doctor said. “I already know far too much. But, then again, this timeline should be moot and void and all for naught. Three great phrase amalgamations, so, Rory…let’s save a princess!”

The moment appeared to be over, so Rory didn’t push it. Instead he followed the Doctor back to the Pandorica where the Doctor flashed psychic paper at Sven and made him leave. Then he climbed on to the railings surrounding the Pandorica and hopped on top of it, beckoning to Rory to follow. Silently begging Amy’s pardon for constantly climbing all over her and letting strange versions of her imaginary friends do likewise, he did. 

They waited there together for awhile, sometimes talking and sometimes not. Rory managed to get the Doctor to tell him a little bit about his latest traveling companion, Donna – though the Doctor wouldn’t say much more than her name - and also about the lives of all the other companions Rory had met. Jamie and Zoe back in their own times – Rory did not like the end to that story – Jo married and exploring the Amazon, Sarah-Jane saving the world from her attic in Ealing, Peri either living with some barbarian king or gone home - Rory couldn’t quite understand from the rambling way the Doctor said it – Ace either doing charity work in Rory’s original time or something about nineteenth century Paris – the Doctor was a bit vague on that bit, too. He flat out refused to say anything about Romana and Rory could understand that and so didn’t press. 

The Doctor even told Rory about the ones that he hadn’t met like Tegan and Turlough, gone back home, or Jack and Rose, one running Torchwood – Rory did not have good memories of his encounters with them – and one happy in a parallel universe. He said something about a human Doctor, but Rory didn’t stop to ask questions because at that point he saw his two ambassadors sidling up to the box.

In a few moments, a young girl joined them, dressed in a heavy cloak. They had a hushed conversation that Rory could just hear with his plastic ears, or he could have if the Doctor didn’t keep whispering and distracting him, saying something rubbish about China not even being at the games historically and lamenting the loss of Austria as a country.

Basically, Chengming told them what had transpired at the tents and they were arguing about what to do. China was all for letting Chengming do it in the confusion, Bulgaria was all about waiting for a better opportunity and Chengming simply wanted more money because of the increased risk. Finally they agreed to wait and Rory stood up, ready to jump down on them.

“Wait,” the Doctor said, showing him a…digital recorder. “We’ve got all the evidence we’ll need.”

“I’m still going to get them,” Rory said. “Evidence like that could be suspect this day and age.”

“Oh, fine, be right all the time,” the Doctor said, looking sulky. 

Rory jumped from the Pandorica, landing lightly on his feet. His quarry had parted ways a little bit ahead and he quickly knocked Bulgaria unconscious, trusting it would last till he got back. China and Chengming were much more difficult. China was evidently a talker and not a fighter, but he was slippery. Chengming was a highly trained assassin and Rory took at least two stab wounds before he managed to subdue her and then kept his gun hand on China so he couldn’t get away.

The Doctor ran up to them announcing he’d gotten the game officials and authorities and they all had a nice confab in the fog. With the eye witness of an above board guard, visual and audio evidence of the actual plan, and the many weapons discovered on Chengming’s person, they were believed and the three carted off with announcements to be made about their sad departure due to illness.

The Doctor and Rory hung back, both wanting anonymity for their own reasons, Rory was sure. In the end, they went back to the Pandorica.

“So…what’s to do for fun around here?” the Doctor asked.

“Um…watching sports?” Rory said, pointing out the obvious.

“I guess they don’t have edible ball bearings here yet,” lamented the Doctor.

“Uh…no.”

“Who do you favor in the discus?” the Doctor said, slinging an arm around Rory and Rory was very confused. 

“So…you’re staying around?” he asked.

“I came here to watch the games, didn’t I? Keep up, Rory!” 

“Well…okay,” said Rory.

This started a very weird series of days for Rory when the Doctor would come and watch the games with him and yell things at the athletes and bring food he’d gotten from the Tardis that wouldn’t be around for several hundred years. Occasionally, the Doctor would go right down to the arena and lecture assorted people who hadn’t behaved according to the Doctor’s idea of things. It was almost the least terrifying time Rory had ever spent with the Doctor and so long as the Doctor didn’t try to make him leave the box he was okay with that. In the process, he got to ask the Doctor all the questions he’d ever wanted to know – though the Doctor refused to answer a lot of them or changed the topic or started blathering on about Timelord responsibility or blatantly lied – and Rory felt quite enlightened by the end of it.

It was actually very sad when the games were over and the Doctor met up with Rory after the closing ceremony to say goodbye.

“Well, getting down to the wire, huh?” the Doctor asked.

“Really really am,” Rory said, nodding. “It’s funny, but most people must think of a hundred years as something that they could never get through. I kind of laugh at a thought like that, but I get it at the same time, because this last hundred feels like forever.”

“You’ll last,” the Doctor said firmly. “I’ve no doubt. The universe has many tricks up its sleeve, it can be cruel and we’re witnessing that every moment, but there are miracles, there’s wonder.”

“You’re a ridiculous miracle,” Rory said, remembering.

“Me?” the Doctor asked, pointing at himself.

“You’ll find out the day you wear a fez and get a sudden desire to mop the floor,” said Rory, as mysteriously as the Doctor himself could say.

“Fez? Me? Don’t be absurd,” the Doctor said, looking horrified. “I couldn’t run my hands all through my hair and run around being all clever. And it would look murder with my coat.”

Rory opened his mouth, but then didn’t bother. Every Doctor was so the same, but every Doctor was so, so different. He wouldn’t really want it to be any other way. He’d often wished differently, but now he just couldn’t imagine life with the Doctor any other way.

“As you wish, Doctor,” he said, smiling to himself.

“You think you know more about me than I do,” the Doctor said, smiling a little grumpily.

“About your future, I most certainly do,” Rory said, grinning.

“Shut up,” the Doctor said and then nearly crushed Rory in a hug which Rory returned gladly.

He had a feeling he probably wouldn’t be seeing the Doctor – at least this one – again. So he waved while the Doctor loped off back into the fog and took up his position with the Pandorica.


	15. One

1963 AD

Rory stood rather awkwardly in the smoking area, holding no cigarette and not particularly wanting one. Plastic people – especially former nurses – don’t smoke. Still, he had to come out here every day for at least fifteen minutes and look like a prat because he was required to take his breaks by law and, somehow, he didn’t think telling everyone he was the Roman Centurion they looked at statues of every day would let him off, not without being sectioned anyway.

This really was the weirdest time – including the Jazz Age – that he’d ever lived through. Mostly because he actually felt naked without his centurion garb on, though in reality, since it had been plastic, he was really probably clothed for the first time in nearly two thousand years, which was a quite embarrassing thought when he considered some of the things he’d done and people he’d met. 

It had been a lot harder to watch the box this last century. People wouldn’t leave him alone if they saw him, treating him like some kind of celebrity or trying to get agreement to experiment on him to see how he worked. So he’d disappeared and left the box alone – the hardest thing he’d ever done – for longer periods of time. Instead he’d finished his medical degree by correspondence, which was really hilarious if he thought about it for long. The difficult part was not putting down treatments that hadn’t been invented yet. Not just things like advanced surgeries but treatments he’d learned in the future of his own time and on other worlds. Worlds gone and never been.

And then came the Blitz. A time when he could have really used the Doctor, any of them, but the Doctor didn’t come and so Rory had pulled and heaved and strained and melted more than a little. He’d been truly frightened, truly shook. The flames were so hot and the bombs were dropping all around him. It was absolute chaos, but he didn’t waver in his goal. He’d lasted that long, he wouldn’t fail. He’d saved the Pandorica and left it for them to find. He’d watched from a distance as they had gathered around it and taken it to a more secure location. He’d been damaged, practically truly naked, with small bits of plastic armor clinging to him. 

His face and hands were okay, apart from blistering on the inside of his hands, but he’d never look so truly a Centurion again and since it had been more of a hindrance than a help those days he didn’t – mostly - regret the loss. It had been his identity for so long. So long. He’d gotten some clothes out of a rubbish bin and then bought proper ones with money he’d squirreled away for just such a purpose. He was mostly functional, hand gun, hearing, vision, and strength all okay. The oddest thing was how much he missed his sword. He still had that huge gash in his shoulder and stab wounds from several different people and if he took off his new clothes he was a bit of a melted, chipped mess. He sincerely hoped Amy never had to look at it. But the vast majority of the damage could be hidden with long sleeves and high necklines and that’s basically what he did.

After the war, he’d followed the Pandorica around the world a bit as countries decided what to do with it. It was unanimously declared the property of Britain - especially since that’s where it’s first known appearance was recorded – at some convention they’d held purely for that reason. Britain had a lot to do after the war and not so much time to be concerned with the mysterious Pandorica. But finally it had been brought home and had its own exhibit made for it at the National Museum. Rory had gotten fake papers to secure a new identity – he’d felt just like a spy – for himself and secured a job as one of the security guards for that specific exhibit. 

It was exactly what he needed; only he was required to do stupid things like take lunches and get days off and things like that. He managed to help make up for it a bit by pretending to be a student writing a paper on the Pandorica and its influence on the public, so people didn’t think it was odd when he stayed late after his shift or showed up on his days off. After that excuse was over he intended to become a professor whose sole purpose was to study the Pandorica, but he always wanted to stay a security guard as well. He wanted that authority over the box.

The times when he was absolutely forced to leave the museum he spent close to it in an all night coffee shop, pretending to drink a cup, and writing or reading or getting more degrees. It was amazing what one could do with one’s time when one didn’t have to sleep or eat or want to do anything but go to work. The waitresses there thought he was very strange – he had been asked out a couple of times – and his coworkers thought he was even more peculiar. He’d been thought worse.

It was odd for him to see London being re-built or, rather, built in the way that he remembered it. Slowly things were coming into focus and it was like coming back home after a long period of time – to which version of his home, he didn’t know. The absolutely weirdest thing was the rise of the police public call box. At first they were red and not so weird, but then…then the blue happened and every time Rory came upon one in the street he always had to knock on the door – probably looking very odd to passers-by - to see if it was the Tardis. It never was, but he still had to try.

Today he was simply standing in the sunshine – he still thought it was weird that the sun was still there – and waiting. Waiting for what, he wasn’t quite sure. But he’d been told to go outside and not to come back in for at least twenty minutes. So he was doing his mental revision thing. Something that had always helped keep him from going crazy. He was very busy doing that when somebody interrupted him with a well-timed cough.

Turning, he saw an elderly man with a cane, black jacket, and very interesting hat approaching him.

“May I help you, sir?” he asked.

“Certainly, young man, certainly. I am looking for the gift shop. I wish to purchase a present for my granddaughter and I cannot seem to find it,” answered the man.

“It’s just inside and to the left,” Rory said, pointing through the glass doors.

The old man pulled out a pair of glasses and peered through them.

“What an absurd way to label things, I still cannot see it. Would you be so good as to show me?”

Rory had fifteen minutes left, why not?

“I’d be happy to do that, sir, follow me,” Rory replied.

So they’d gone inside and Rory had taken the old man into the gift shop where he’d insisted on getting Rory’s opinion on what to buy. It had taken a while because the old man couldn’t find what he wanted and disapproved of everything.

“What nonsense, what drivel,” he kept repeating. “Where I come from we don’t bother with such things.”

“Is there something your granddaughter wanted in particular? Why did you come in here to get something rather than a normal shop?” asked Rory.

“Susan is a very special child and you wouldn’t understand why but she’s much more mature than any of your children here. She likes history and science, even if it’s primitive, and something like these things might amuse her. Or so I’d thought.”

“What time period is Susan interested in?” Rory asked, trying to be patient and rather feeling like he was dealing with Mrs. Poggit – who, when she wasn’t parading in people’s dreams and killing him, was actually a rather nice old lady, if a tad persnickety - again.

“Ancient, very ancient, and far beyond your time, young man.”

“Try me,” Rory muttered under his breath. “Well, this is our oldest section. We’ve some lovely things from the Stone Age right on down to replicas of the Pandorica.”

“What’s a Pandorica, hmm?” asked the man.

“Uh, big box. Mysterious. Found under Stonehenge by the Romans,” Rory said, repeating the tourist spiel he’d helped come up with though probably without the eloquence and zeal the museum heads required in the actual tour guides.

“You have it here?”

“Yes, sir, upstairs,” answered Rory.

“Very polite, aren’t you?” he said, not really waiting for a reply. “I shall buy a small Pandorica and perhaps you would be so kind as to show me the real thing, hmm?”

Rory glanced surreptitiously at his watch – he didn’t need it, not really. Ten minutes and that’s where he was headed back to anyway.

“Absolutely, sir.”

“I see you’re worried about the time,” his new friend said, pointing at Rory’s watch. “Don’t bother with me if you’ve some place to be. I am a born navigator,” and he chuckled to himself.

“That’s actually where I’m headed, sir,” Rory assured him. “I’ll just wait here, Mr…?”

“Not mister,” the man said, “Doctor.”

“Me, too,” Rory said. “then Dr…?”

“Just Doctor. The Doctor will do fine.”

Rory wanted to burst out laughing but he didn’t say anything. He still wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

“Sure, Doctor,” he said.

He waited while the Doctor made his purchase and then took him upstairs, gently asking questions all the way.

“Thank you, young man,” the Doctor said as Rory helped him up the stairs, inwardly very amused at having to do so.

“My name is Rory,” he said, looking at the Doctor’s face for clues. “Rory Williams.”

The Doctor didn’t even blink.

“Yes, yes, very good,” the Doctor said, pulling his arm free. “I can manage, young Williamson.”

Rory smirked and didn’t bother correcting him. Either this was some doddering old man with an eccentric epithet or this was the first Doctor and he’d never met him. Rory’s life would lead him to believe the latter, but he thought the former would be hilarious as well.

“And you’re from where?” asked Rory.

“Oh, you wouldn’t know it. You’d have no idea how to conceive it,” the Doctor said, chuckling to himself.

“Oh, I’ve been to some far away places,” Rory said, taking a chance. “My favorite was a little bazaar on the third moon of Neptune.”

The old man stared at him and then looked away.

“Impertinence, hmmm. Trying to make fun of an old man, eh!”

“Not if you’re the Doctor from Gallifrey,” Rory said.

“What?” the Doctor said, looking around him furtively. “What do you mean?” He brandished his cane. “You’re not Gallifreyan.”

“I’m Auton,” Rory said.

The Doctor tried to hit him over the head with his cane. Years of instinct and training helped Rory to avoid it easily.

“What infamy are you planning?” the Doctor asked. “I will not return.”

“You don’t…want to go back to Gallifrey?” Rory asked, confused, keeping away from the Doctor’s cane.

“Certainly not. After the way they treated me! After what happened to Susan! I only borrowed the Tardis anyway.”

“You stole the Tardis!” Rory cried out, utterly amazed.

“Borrowed, I said, young man, are you hard of hearing?” asked the Doctor testily.

“No, I heard you. It’s just, from everything I’ve seen I would’ve thought you and the Tardis were practically melded together at birth or however it happens for Timelords.”

“We are more complex than that. Woven, I'd say,” the Doctor said grumpily. “And you seem to know rather more than is good for you. What do you know about me, hmm?”

“I know at least eleven of you,” Rory said. “I’m going to travel with you in the future, Doctor. In the Tardis.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Doctor said. “I would never take anyone else in the Tardis with me. Least of all an impertinent…Auton, you say?”

“You’ll have to take my word for it, Doctor,” Rory said. “I promise, I don’t mean you any harm. I’m not…uh, I’m not from Gallifrey. Not here to get bounty on you or anything like that. I just happen to know…all of you.”

“Eleven, you say?” the Doctor said.

“Well, I’ve met eleven of you. I’ve been guarding the Pandorica for almost two thousand years and I’ve bumped into you many times. But I traveled with one of you that’s after your tenth body.”

“How careless of me,” the Doctor said, seeming deep in thought. “Well, my boy, I shall take your word for it. But I shall be watching you, yes, very closely. What’s in this Pandorica, hmm?”

“It’s rather complicated,” Rory said. “I’ve already explained everything to your second and ninth selves. I’m not sure time can handle another…disturbance. I’m going to have to ask you to erase your memory of meeting me. It’s rather important to time and…I know time’s important to you.”

“Prettily said, prettily said, Williamson. Well, all right then. I shall see about it. I’m not promising anything, mind you. Now, is this your Pandorica?”

“That’s my Pandorica,” Rory said, gesturing to the inner chamber where the Pandorica sat, guarded by velvet ropes, a statue of himself, and a plaque of the history lining the walls. 

“Very intriguing,” the Doctor said, puttering closer and examining it closely. “Yes, very. I can understand your need to guard it.”

“It’s…personal,” Rory said. “I have maybe about thirty years left until it can be opened. Somehow. But that’s nothing really. Not compared to everything.”

The Doctor looked closely at him and even though this was the youngest version of the Doctor there could be, Rory could still feel the ancient might of the man, the wisdom and fire and he rather shuddered than feel that gaze on him. This Doctor was so young, had so much potential, had so much to live through, but he was still the same.

“I wish you good fortune,” the Doctor said finally. “Yes, and I’m grateful for your help. I will look forward to meeting you again, though I shall not be inviting you to travel with me. It’s not possible, you see. Very dangerous and you wouldn’t want to be an exile, no, you wouldn’t.”

“I’m already an exile, Doctor,” Rory said. “And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather travel with. Just…please, uh, don’t remember me saying that.”

The Doctor laughed and left the room.

“Very amusing,” Rory could hear him muttering. “What an impression. I shall tell Susan, yes.”

Rory stood there for a few minutes processing – granddaughter! - and wondering if his memories were going to change, as, indeed, had happened a few times. But other than an odd look Two gave him on their first meeting, nothing changed. So he guessed the Doctor must really have wiped his memory entirely.

This encounter, more than any of the others, had really helped shape Rory’s perspective of the Doctor. It was mind-boggling. It would be like meeting a teacher or a parent when they were a baby. So very weird and it made Rory wonder how he would interact with the Doctor – provided the universe didn’t utterly die – once they got back together. He had so much more respect, insight, and knowledge of the Doctor now. In fact, he rather thought Amy might be jealous. It would give him something to think about, anyway, over the next horribly long thirty years.


	16. Eleven

1996 AD

Rory was the ideal person to work night shifts and to cover for other people when they were ill or wanted free time off or what have you. Everyone at the museum loved him for that. That’s how he’d been awarded the position that allowed him to travel with the box when it went on tour. However, he’d argued strongly in favor of keeping it solely in the National Museum once Amy had been born so that, somehow, her DNA could revive her older self.

He’d made sure of that, too. During the last century or so, his one great fear had been that Amy would never be born and then he’d…well, he didn’t know what he’d do. He’d taken the time off, the longest he’d ever been away from the box - apart from those three weeks in the seventeen hundreds, but that was another story entirely – and gone to Scotland on her birthday to make sure she was there. She had been, a wrinkly, wispy, redheaded thing in the hospital nursery and he’d had to fight the urge to kidnap her and take her back to the museum. He didn’t because he didn’t know what was supposed to happen and he was going to wait for the Doctor – his Doctor – to see how they would get Amy out. He lived in perpetual fear of messing up their one opportunity or something like that.

He hadn’t seen any Doctors since 1963, though, for a few weeks after he’d met him, Rory had noticed the First Doctor watching him surreptitiously, peeking around corners and glaring suspiciously at him. Rory’s memories still didn’t change and one day the Doctor just wasn’t there anymore and Rory could only suppose he’d flown off in the Tardis or something like that. It had been oddly reassuring to have the Doctor around for so long and so he was sad when it had happened. But Rory wanted, if nothing else, to keep time running.

Today had been a normal day. He’d been working for twenty-four hours, both as a guard and a professor. He’d gotten a tweed jacket on purpose for the second task. It had been slightly slippery to stay in one place and not have people notice that he never aged. He’d experimented a bit with makeup – he sincerely hoped no one ever found out about the cosmetology class he’d taken – and it really helped when people who might start asking questions suddenly got erased from history, as horrible as that was. So Rory had been able to work as an academic in the day and a guard at night for at least the last fifteen years.

Today was normal up until Amelia Pond darted through the exhibition, past ancient Daleks without even caring, past _him_ without even caring, and examined the Pandorica with an intensity Rory wanted to cry at seeing it was so familiar to him. There she was, the little girl who had captured his imagination and helped shape him into who he was. Who would grow up to be the love of his life and the reason he was there at all.   
He still didn’t know what was going to happen. Was today the day? Why wasn’t the Doctor around? What did Amelia need to do? Should he speak to her? Then Rory’s eyes widened when he saw a bright flash and a fez and Amelia’s drink disappeared. He relaxed; the Doctor was working on it. Rory would simply do his best to follow the yellow sticky note. He watched Amelia’s clumsy attempts at hiding and gently corralled all search efforts away from the Dalek exhibit. When night fell and he was officially on duty, he lied through his teeth on his walkie-talkie and said he’d seen her leave the museum. Then he patrolled and waited to see what would happen.

He was on the other end of the floor when he heard the crash and he raced back to the Pandorica exhibit, cursing at himself in Latin for having left it in the first place. When he got there, he held out his flashlight and then dropped it. He really missed his sword, but they’d never taken his gun from him – the gun he hated – so he aimed it at the Dalek.

“You think?” he asked.

The should-not-be-alive alien appeared to die again and Rory looked up.

There she was. She was alive, alive, alive. She wasn’t strapped in the box and she wasn’t an illusion. It was Amy.

“Amy,” he whispered.

“Rory.”

She was running toward him and he put his hands over his mouth and she was wrapping her arms around him and then all he could do was say the one thing he’d been bursting to say for two thousand years.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. It just happened.”

In true Amy fashion that didn’t appear to matter as much to her as Rory was sure it would have to other girls.

“Oh, shut up,” she said.

She kissed him and it was beautiful. It was so, so amazing and he never ever wanted to stop. Dimly he was aware of the Doctor – his Doctor! – coming up behind them.

“Yeah, shut up, cause we've got to go. Come on!” the Doctor said.

But Rory had other things on his mind.

“I waited. Two thousand years, I waited for you,” he said. 

It was like they’d never happened, those years, because he couldn’t have told you the name of the ship he’d sailed to China on with Marco Polo or how to ask where the loo was in French if you’d paid him. All he could think was Amy, Amy, Amy.

“No, still shut up,” she said.

She was kissing him again and that was what he had waited two thousand years for. He had earned a nice, long snog.

“And break! And breathe!” the Doctor said from somewhere over Rory’s shoulder. “Well, somebody didn't get out much for two thousand years.”

Rory could appreciate the irony in that even through the absolutely amazing kissing going on.

Horrible Daleks. They interrupted everything nice. Soon they were doing the running thing – but the running was nice with Amy’s hand clasped in his – again. The Doctor slammed the door behind him and casually asked questions.

“So…two thousand years. How did you do?”

“Kept out of trouble,” Rory said lightly.

“Liar,” the Doctor told him, throwing him a grin. “How about the time when the Rezer scared your pants off? Though not literally since they were plastic and rather attached and that makes me happy though it rather looks as if Amy wouldn’t mind.”

“Doctor!” Rory scolded. “You weren’t supposed to remember! How would you like it if your own obstinacy caused the universe to implode!”

“That’s impossible, Rory,” the Doctor said. “The universe was already imploding. Besides, I did erase it. I just made another trigger to remember. Oh, that’s very odd, my memories are shifting around faster than a hula dancer – I once spent a lovely weekend in Oahu in 5455, shame you weren’t there – because I’ve met you so often and we’ve created so many different timelines. It’s very dangerous; in fact, it’s causing the universe to implode. Rory, how could you let this happen?”

“Oh no,” Rory said, pointing his finger, “this is not on me. I begged you to forget me, I pleaded, I demanded, I nagged-”

“Yeah, you did,” the Doctor said rudely.

“-but you always knew best, you were the Doctor, even when you were the one who told me to do it in the first place,” finished Rory.

“Oh, fine, but it would’ve happened anyway. We’ve just caused it to be a bit faster than it would have otherwise,” reasoned the Doctor.

“Good, cause I rather liked what happened some of those times,” Rory said.

The Doctor grinned at him and launched himself at Rory, hugging him ferociously.

“Rory the Roman, mate of the centuries. I wouldn’t have traded your anniversary for all the tea in the Qukisp galaxy!”

“Uh, could I break into this little love fest?” Amy asked, her hands on hips. “What the hell did you two get up to without me?”

Rory and the Doctor looked rather guiltily at each other and Rory hastily backed away from their hug.

“Nothing,” the Doctor said, smiling with what Rory supposed the Doctor thought was an innocent smile.

“Waiting for you,” Rory said soberly.

Then the Dalek came back and the Doctor popped back to Stonehenge and then back again and then again and again. Then got Amelia to come to the museum in the first place and then she didn’t exist anymore and then the Doctor died.

An older version of him, anyway, and they did some more running and Rory finally found out why the sun was still burning – the Tardis blowing up, conveniently at the very same place the sun would be for night and day purposes – and the Doctor got River out and they ran again, the Doctor figuring things out all the way.

“When the Tardis blew up, it caused a total event collapse. A time explosion. It blasted every atom in every moment of the universe. Except...” coaxed the Doctor.

“Except inside the Pandorica,” Amy put in.

“The perfect prison. Inside it, perfectly preserved, a few billion atoms of the universe as it was. In theory, you could extrapolate the whole universe from a single one of them, like cloning a body from a single cell. And we've got the bumper family pack,” the Doctor said gladly.

“No, too fast, I'm not getting it,” said Rory. 

Rory was confused again, which was good because he was getting tired of being the one to know everything and do everything.

“The box contains a memory of the universe, and the light transmits the memory. And that's how we're going to do it,” said the Doctor like it was obvious.

“Do what?” asked Rory.

“Relight the fire. Reboot the universe. Come on!” said the Doctor.

Amy, Rory, and River exchanged glances and then they followed.

It was, again, all very blurry from there. The Doctor died again, Rory shot the Dalek again, River was her usual – how did he know it was usual? – mysterious self again, and the Doctor had tricked them all. Again.

He waited for them in the Pandorica - that same box Rory had guarded so faithfully - and River explained to them what was going to happen. Amy started to argue with her and Rory took the opportunity to step closer to the Doctor.

“What about all the others, Doctor?” Rory asked.

The Doctor looked up at him, face dark and in pain.

“The others? Ah, the others. I can’t help them now, Rory. This is all I can do.”

“But I know you,” Rory said, feeling awful, “I know you. Saving the universe now and taking yourself out of it won’t save the universe from it not being saved from all the times you’ve saved it before.”

“You’ve been hanging around me for too long, Rory,” the Doctor said, somehow managing to smile. “That almost made sense. But it will work. It’s a brand new universe waiting to happen, just enough of a kick start to pass by those niggling things in the back of your brain, those little events that should’ve, would’ve, could’ve happened.”

“But everyone,” Rory said, “Sarah-Jane and Martha and Jamie and Amy and me, we won’t know you. You’re murdering our very lives.”

“Would you rather I murdered the universe?” the Doctor asked, sounding so tired that Rory felt guilty because he knew exactly what the Doctor meant and felt like because that’s how he’d felt. “This is what I can do for you humans. For the others. You know that better than River or Amy, Centurion, you know that.”

Rory nodded because he did know. He could appreciate the Doctor’s action and he could understand its purpose. He knew.

“All those things I learned about you and was going to rib you about for an eternity are going to be lost now,” he said, cracking a smile.

“I get the last laugh,” the Doctor said, somehow managing to sound smug.

“What was the trigger you used?” asked Rory curiously.

The Doctor looked at him and blinked slowly, then smiled.

“Happy Rory. Happy Rory with Amy,” he answered.

Rory swallowed hard, holding back his tears. 

“Goodbye, Doctor,” Rory said. “Tell me, tell me, which one are you?”

“Lucky number Eleven,” the Doctor whispered with a grin. 

Rory nodded and the Doctor looked at him for a moment and then Rory stepped back, letting the tears fall, and let River talk to him again. The Doctor spoke with Amy last and then he was gone, crying Geronimo to the skies and taking one last ride through the universe.


	17. Epilogue

_Two thousand years. The boy who waited. Good on you, mate._

When Rory stepped through the doors of the Tardis again he was hit with flashes of many other Tardises. It rocked him for a moment and though he participated in the conversation he pretty much spent the next half hour as they rocketed their way to the Orient Express running through two thousand years worth of memories and trying not to laugh and/or cry.

It wasn’t a bad thing. Everything felt right. This was his Doctor on his Tardis with his wife – Amy was his wife, finally – and they were all where they were supposed to be, but it was still so much to sort through. It was a bit of an overload. Because now he had three lives worth of memories and had lived in many timelines and at least two universes. Stories for the grandkids in spades there. The first time he’d had years to get adjusted and now he was just off on a mission for Her Majesty with a madcap alien with eleven different faces and personalities and a feisty redhead who was currently changing out of her wedding dress. He supposed he should change, too, but he’d much rather talk to the Doctor and gauge what had happened.

He leaned against the console railing, watching the Doctor do his Tardis dance, holding a lever or pushing a button when instructed.

“I didn’t remember you,” he said suddenly.

The Doctor never stopped.

“Well, no offense, but I skipped the rewind bit with the bits of you in it. Not really because I like Amy better, though if she asks, I definitely do-” the Doctor paused to wink at him “-but because would you really want to live all two thousand years again in reverse knowing you were going to just cease to exist at the end?”

Rory frowned, trying to follow that.

“Uh, still doesn’t address my point. Like…at all,” he answered finally.

“It was all about your point, Rory,” the Doctor said, bopping him on the head on his way around the console. “I had to send a message to someone and I sent it to Amy. It’s not that I wouldn’t send it to you, after all, you’re more reliable, two thousand years, you! But…the point remains, as I’ve crowed before from the rooftops - though no rooftops were actually involved - that…Amy Pond is no ordinary girl. She has the universe singing in her head, brought you back, brought me back. That’s why it worked so well. And that’s to say that you couldn’t remember me. No fault of yours, just born in the wrong house.”

“I…see, I think,” Rory said. “I guess I just wanted to say that I remember now. Everything.”

The Doctor fixed him with a look that Rory didn’t understand for a minute.

“As do I,” the Doctor said softly. “But I’m suited for that kind of thing, rather made for it.”

“Woven,” Rory corrected.

“I’m going to regret continuing to exist, aren’t I?” the Doctor said.

“Every day,” Rory told him with a smile. “Can’t pull things over my eyes.”

“Yes, I can,” the Doctor said.

Rory sighed.

“Yeah, yeah, you can. But not as much.”

“No, not as much. Still, what I meant before you started a contest again – ridiculously competitive, human males – was that it might hurt for a while,” said the Doctor.

“What?” Rory asked, suddenly alarmed. 

All he felt at the moment was euphorically happy and tired and gloriously full and very, very human.

“Your brain isn’t equipped to deal with so many lives. It was easier before because you were plastic, but now, now you’re going to get confused and you’re going to feel lost. You’re going to wonder who you are, who I am, even who Amy is. And that might be very hard.”

“Uh, that’s not good,” Rory said. “What do I do?”

“Ah, faithful to the last,” the Doctor said, throwing himself against the railing next to Rory. “Well, I can help there. If you want. You’d probably do fine. I wouldn’t doubt it, but…just picture a door. Take everything from before and stick it behind that door. Concentrate on the here and now. All the hurt and disorientation and shame and whatever you’re confused about, just keep behind that door and only take out what you need.”

“When I open the door, won’t everything fall out?” Rory asked out of his vast experience with Amy’s closet.

The Doctor burst out laughing and kissed Rory on the top of the head, which Rory felt vaguely embarrassed about.

“Rory Williams, always so practical. I’m going to enter your mind,” the Doctor said, putting his hands on Rory’s temples, “and I’m going to help you create compartments, all right? We’ll put them all behind the door. And you can find whatever you’re looking for. We’ll label one…oh, 'embarrassing facts about the Doctor' if you like.”

“Okay…” Rory said, feeling utterly apprehensive, but he trusted the Doctor with everything.

It was the work of a moment, really. Rory knew what it was like to experience time in funny ways, but this literally felt like he was watching a tape of himself and the Doctor building a house in fast forward. Very surreal and realistic at the same time, like they were joking as they did it and the Doctor was wearing a hard hat – Rory really hoped there weren’t any in the wardrobe, even though he knew there probably were - and calling it cool. 

Then they were done and they were in the console room and the Doctor was flipping levers again and Rory felt…organized. Really, really organized and he could barely believe the genius of that had come from a man who kept everything he’d ever received in a big jumble everywhere. Honestly, everywhere in the Tardis, there were just piles of things – all kinds of things from clothing to medical supplies to toys – in the corridors, simply sitting. Rory had been itching to get his hands on them for months, or two thousand years, whichever.

“The last two thousand years were either the best or worst stag party ever,” he mumbled to himself.

The Doctor laughed and continued to do things to the Tardis which were probably not strictly necessary and simply for the Doctor’s own amusement.

“By the way,” the Doctor said, putting his hand in his pocket and pulling out a Polaroid, “I had a dig through in the cellar. Lookee what I found.”

Rory took it and it was the picture of him that Peri had taken all those years and a whole universe ago.

“How is this here?” he asked in amazement.

“I had it in my pocket. I think. Or one of my pockets. Or I put it in my temporally-locked safe box in the cellar…” said the Doctor quickly.

“You kept it on purpose,” Rory said, tracing the lines of his plastically captured face, the Sixth Doctor’s arm in all its multi-color glory flung around his shoulder.

“Despite what you may think,” the Doctor said rather primly, “I do like my past a little bit. I’ve had far more glorious times than you could ever imagine.”

“I believe you, I believe you,” Rory said. “Can I keep this?”

“That’s why I gave it to you,” the Doctor said, rolling his eyes. “I’ve got a copy.”

“Thank you. For everything,” said Rory.

“Don’t go getting all sappy on me,” the Doctor said. “I’ll have to start calling Amy to take care of it. I like it much better when I have to call you about her.”

“Shut up, Doctor,” Rory said, smiling at him.

The Doctor smirked back and kept on with the Tardis. 

Rory took the time again to feel around his head – so to speak – and remind himself of everything, which reminded him of something important.

“Doctor,” Rory said, “is Martha still okay?”

The Doctor looked at him and smiled.

“Oh, Rory. My Rory. Yes, Martha is fine. Still married, still fighting, stronger than ever.”

“I did promise to have drinks with her,” Rory reminded him, never doubting that, somehow, Martha would remember him.

“Oh, fine,” the Doctor said, “we’ll go after we help Her Majesty. I can drop you two off and get some work done.”

“You’re coming, too,” Rory said firmly.

“Really?” the Doctor asked, frowning. “It’s not that I don’t love Martha, I love Martha, but Mickey will be there; oh, fine-“ he said as if Rory was arguing with him which Rory was most certainly not doing “-I love Mickey, too. It’s just…”

“Hard to go back,” Rory finished for him. “But it’s worth it, Doctor. How many times did you come back for me?”

“You’re probably going to get a swelled head about that,” the Doctor said. “Right, I’m going right back to favoring Amy, because this is ridiculous, but…” he said, winking at Rory again and Rory wondered perhaps if this was an alarming new habit of the Doctor’s, “…let’s go see Martha while Amy gets changed – likely be hours yet. One last adventure for the Doctor and Rory the Roman!”

Rory laughed and rolled his eyes and nodded.

The Doctor flipped another switch and they were gone.


End file.
